#stuck to one per source material and let me tell you it made me so sad not to be able to add some multiples lol

[pagesofkenna]

apparently this is a bandwagon and i'm hopping aboard

[astaroth1357]

The Obey Me Cast on a Camping Trip (Part One: Brothers)

Hey guys, thank you sooo much for getting me to 2,000 followers!! I honestly don’t know what to say... I never dreamed that this little hobby of mine would reach so many eyes, and I can’t be more grateful. At a time in my life where things feel so chaotic and uncertain, being a part of this community and sharing my weird ideas has been what’s kept me going. It’s been such a rewarding experience all around, so thank you. From the bottom of my heart. 😊

I pulled out all the stops for this post. I even brought out one of my favorite songs of all time: Ao to Natsu by Mrs. GREEN APPLE to get the feel juuust right. I hope you all enjoy it!

This post is split in two due to length (I had too much fun again...) For the Undateables, please click HERE!

Intro:

Another day, another team building activity between the demons and the exchange students. It was Diavolo’s idea to go on a camping trip to the human world (because of course it was), and there were very… mixed responses. That sentiment wasn’t helped when he refused Lucifer’s insistent pleas to just purchase cabins for everyone to stay in. Oh no, the Demon Lord wanted to rough it out in the wilderness, and now everyone else was getting dragged along with him…

Wonder how that turned out?

Lucifer

Really, really, really tried to push Diavolo to just rent out cabins in but noooo, he wasn’t having it... So he ended up driving a van crammed with his brothers, the MC, and a butt-ton of camping equipment into the Alaskan wilderness… 

The car ride itself was insufferable… We’re talking, “I SWEAR I WILL TURN THIS CAR AROUND!!” level of antics every 10 miles or so (mostly from Mammon)…

Setting up camp was even more of a nightmare because about half of his brothers were utterly useless. The other half (save Satan) were completely clueless… Had it not been for Barbatos and Satan he probably would have just resigned himself to the mercy of the river’s currents and let it take him away…

He couldn’t even wear his usual clothes because of the situation… For the first time in who knows how many centuries, he was stuck wearing jeans… Diavolo even bought him several plaid shirts... (which he was not happy with btw because his brother wouldn’t stop making fun of the “new” him)

He had his own tent of decent-size, enough to move around in but nothing to write home about. The very fact he didn’t have to share was a luxury in itself, so he took it for what it was worth...

He spent a good portion of the trip focused on two things: keeping Diavolo happy and everybody else alive. He rarely left camp unless forced to; he just wanted to get it all over with as soon as possible…

If he did leave, it was because Diavolo would drag him along to fish or hike. He was... less than pleased to be called out of his tent at the crack of dawn or well past dusk to sit on a little rented fishing boat with Diavolo… but he didn’t exactly pick his friends so...

He rates the trip Too Much Trouble/10. Let’s never do it again.

Mammon

Wasn’t a massive fan of being stuck out in the wild, but Satan told him some made-up bullshit about buried treasure out in the forest and got him HOOKED. He even borrowed stole a whole bunch of mining/digging equipment just for the occasion!

He spent most of the car ride asking, “Are we there yet??” like a child. The MC had to step in to keep Lucifer from leaving him on the side of the road at multiple points during the journey... 

He was one of the utterly useless ones when it came to setting up camp. Someone charged him with putting up the twin’s tent, and he spent thirty minutes reading (then re-reading) the instructions while shouting expletives. Poor Simeon had to shield Luke from the vulgarity…

He has to share a tent with Levi, which neither of them liked. Mammon mainly because of Levi’s “old fish stink” and Levi because he feared catching “Mammon’s stupid.”

He was all jazzed up to go digging from Day One, though. He’d have breakfast, grab his shovel, then wander out into the middle of nowhere to go dig holes in the ground…

He also got completely lost on Day One, and it took the MC summoning him with their pact to return him to the group... By that time, he was filthy and somehow looked like he had been castaway for days (even though he was gone for like, three hours?)

When he stubbornly refused to stop digging, Lucifer resorted to just tying a rope around his ankle and letting him loose. It was up to Mammon to get back to camp before dinner, or else Lucifer would yank him back like he was on a leash.

Satan waited until the last day to finally tell Mammon the treasure was bullshit, and he was PISSED. He even threw Satan into the river, which resulted in the rest of the brothers joining in for a swim while the two tried to “playfully” drown each other.

He’d rate this trip 0/10 because he didn’t get any buried treasure. What a ripoff…

Leviathan

Hated the idea with a burning, seething passion. There’s no internet, cable, electricity, or phone signal out in the middle of nowhere! How the heck is an otaku supposed to survive?!

He clung to his electronics during the car ride until either they ran out of signal or their battery died, then he didn’t know what to do with himself… He resorted to reading several volumes of the manga he stuffed into his bag and clung to the MC for emotional support…

Yet another useless soul trying to put the camp together. He was in charge of his and Mammon’s tent but ended up almost crying in frustration… How the hell do humans do this all on their own?? Wasn’t he supposed to be the third strongest?! Why is he so pathetic?!? 😫

Hates sharing a tent with Mammon because he always wakes up to the second born encroaching on his space somehow… Poor baby is pretty much directly against the tent wall and STILL has to deal with legs and elbows in his side... 😰

Spends the majority of the trip moping in the tent... If he goes out there, he has to deal with the sun, bugs, and people… No thanks. He only leaves for meals and occasionally to go swimming. 

When he found out part of the way through that Barbs brought portable solar panels and a battery pack for Diavolo and Lucifer’s phones, he was livid. He demanded access to the power source, which Lucifer refused because “It would defeat the purpose of this trip.”

He’d have summoned Lotan right then and there, deadass in the middle of the forest, if the MC hadn’t intervened. He then went back to moping, but now at the bottom of the lake and it took a lot of coaxing to get him back out…

On the final day, he was packing up the camp before anyone else even woke up. He wanted OUT and back to civilization ASAP. Bedroom here he comes!

Satan

You wouldn’t think of Satan as an outdoorsy guy. Still, he has shades of a survivalist in him (mostly because he’s read a lot of guides and was looking for an excuse to use them for a loooong time).

He read for the majority of the ride. He was squished between Asmo and Levi, which was reasonably peaceful. But he did end up shouting at Mammon quite a bit towards the end because “NO, we’re not there yet, peabrain!!”

He actually wasn’t a waste of space when setting up the camp, and between him, Barbs, and Lucifer, they were able to get a lot of stuff set up before sundown. He did have to bark a few orders to the others here and there, but overall competency won out in the end.

He shared a tent with Asmo, and the two made it work well enough… Except when Asmo did things like spraying his perfumes and dry shampoos, making it practically impossible to breathe in for a few minutes…

Spent a lot of the first few days reinforcing the camp to a ridiculous degree.

Did he have to collect large branches to build an exterior fence around the campsite? No. But he did.

Did he have to set up a water distillation system using some of the materials Barbs had lying around the “kitchen?” No. But he did.

Did he have to weave a series of fishing nets to catch them lunch from the lake and river? I think you get the point by now.

Only once he built pretty much every contraption or improvement he could think of, did he go back to just reading and relaxing by the fire.

By the time the group was ready to leave, Satan had somehow managed to craft them a veritable, self-sustaining fortress in the middle of the Alaskan wilds…

Overall he would rate the trip as… meh. Next time give him a challenge like a deserted island or an actual desert, and then he’ll really see what he can do.

Asmodeus

Was about as unhappy with the idea as Levi was… It wasn’t that he disliked the outdoors per se, it was just that no one, NO ONE, pulls off looking flawless after several days stuck in a tent!

He chatted the entire car ride from start to finish. He never stopped talking. It made for decent background noise at least…

Was one of the more clueless ones when trying to set up camp and pretty just did what he was ordered. The second he was left to try and figure something out on his own, he went to Lucifer or Satan for help because NOPE. Human equipment is needlessly complicated sometimes…

He had to share a tent with Satan, which in theory shouldn’t have been that bad, but Satan was out basically all day in the sun doing who knows what and would always come back sweaty and gross! At some points, he had to chase his brother out of the tent until he dunked himself in the river or something. No way was Asmo sleeping next to that. 😤

Asmo took the second-longest to get up and get ready in the morning. Sometimes he wouldn’t even leave the tent until well past breakfast just in an attempt to salvage his hair and skin… He only got grouchier about it as the trip went on… 😥

A more… earthy looking Asmo is kind of a bizarre sight. He’s still attractive, no doubt, but it’s less like polished glamour and more like Hollywood humble. He spent the majority of the trip looking like a somewhat dirtied movie-star (which he still insisted was the worst he’s ever looked in ages).

Aside from salvaging his looks, he actually enjoyed taking pictures of their surroundings or of the group (but not himself). He sometimes forgot how genuinely breathtaking the human world could be…

….but his patience for the place wore out quickly once he started noticing his hair getting greasy. He was right next to Levi, packing up the site once it was finally time to leave. At least those two finally found something they could agree on, let’s get the fuck out already! 

Beelzebub

He was really curious about trying camping food and pretty excited that Barbatos was coming, too (because that meant great food in general).

Unfortunately, Lucifer had to stop the van at basically every gas station they passed for Beel could refill on snacks… Belphie ended up getting buried in wrappers pretty often, but he was asleep, so it didn’t matter much.

Beel did a lot of the heavy lifting when setting the camp up, but the finer details were left up to everybody else. He had his hands full getting stuff off the cars as is…

Of course, he shared a tent with Belphie, and there wasn’t much complaint between them. Honestly, there would have been more drama if they were split, so this was the better option.

After the MC told Beel about fishing and how it could net him more food, if he did it right, he knew exactly what he wanted to do during the trip.

… But no one told him how long and slow the process would be. There were points he’d get so hungry he’d consider eating the bait himself…

That was until about Day Three of the trip when they passed by a river full of grizzly bears… He was about to ask the MC why the bears were all standing in the water, but then he saw a fish practically leap directly into one’s mouth…

Beel had discovered his true calling.

Of course, the grizzlies didn’t take too kindly to a demon suddenly sprinting into the water with them. They tried to fight him off, but Beel just tossed most of them downstream without any issue until they realized who the apex predator really was…

After forming a shaky truce with the bears, Beel would stand in the water for hours then come back with whole baskets full of salmon… There were far more fish than Barbatos knew what to do with, so he’d just confiscate a few then let Beel eat the rest...

The MC shuddered to think about what Beel had done to the local salmon population… But he was full and happy for most of the trip, so he had a great time!

Belphegor

Sleep for him isn’t too contingent on location, so the idea of camping wasn’t terrible. It did sound like a lot of hassle for no good reason, though…

He spent the entire car ride asleep, head and cow pillow pressed up against the window and everything. It wasn’t the most comfortable experience, but he’d dealt with worse.

He was utterly useless when putting up the camp by choice, thank you. He had more than enough sense to get things put together; he just didn’t want to. If he wasn’t asked to do something by Beel or the MC, he’d just lay back in the grass and smugly watch everybody else struggle…

Again, he and Beel are in the same tent, and you wouldn’t hear any complaints out of him. He did start to have some second thoughts when Beel began getting a fishy smell, though, so he tried to bunk with the MC in their tent for a while.

Like Levi, Belphie didn’t leave the tent much during the daylight hours, but that was because he was still asleep… There was no good way to wake him with no alarms available, so he’d sleep in past lunch easily.

When he was awake, he didn’t leave camp very much except to walk with the MC or watch Beel fishing grizzly-style.

Eventually, Asmo and Diavolo got sick of him dodging their photos, so they’d started posing him Weekend at Bernie’s style around the camp (always conveniently propped up by something and with sunglasses on)

Something Belphie did like, however, was the nighttime. Since there were no lights around, he could practically see everything the sky had to offer. He could spend hours laying on his back long after everyone else had gone to bed just admiring the stars.

All in all, not a terrible trip. Anything that could give him that view like that was well worth it. 6/10, would sleep again.

Click HERE for Part Two. Check out my Masterlist for more!

[chokemeanakin]

Aggressive Negotiations (part one)-- Anakin Skywalker x fem reader

Okay so I’ve gotten a lot of requests for Anakin seeing reader dressed up for the first time, and I also got a “stuck-in-the-closet” trope, and a “handcuffed-together” trope, so I thought I’d knock out three birds with one stone and just combine them all. Enjoy ;)

(Ps I hope you all don’t mind that I always make reader a non-jedi? Idk I just prefer it when they both have their own strengths.)

Masterlist

Read it on ao3

Wc: 2.6k

The thin material of the dress stuck to your legs, and you tugged it down self-consciously. Fancy red dresses were not your usual cup of tea, but tonight you had a mission, and the entirety of it depended on your ability to seduce the Prince of Krygo.

For once, you wished Anakin had failed at a mission. He had been sent before you to drive Separatist forces away from Kygo before they could take over the rich mining planet, and had succeeded in not only that, but saving the Prince’s life. Of course, this meant a banquet of celebration was to be held, with Anakin as the guest of honor. 

Then, rumors of Count Dooku’s presence at the ball were revealed, which is where you came in. Anakin could not get the information alone-- he needed a more… direct source to the knowledge, one where the Prince would have his guard down and he’d be completely open to divulging important information. The Council was obviously “under-the-table” about suggesting you fill this role, and still won’t explicitly tell you what they suggest you do. But you got the idea. 

Not that it made you uncomfortable. You were perfectly fine with exploiting a man’s weaknesses for your own good-- in the most respectful way possible. It was mostly the fact that it was Anakin who would be by your side tonight, and it was also Anakin who was your secret lover, and Anakin who had a bad habit of becoming possessive and jealous whenever he felt like his attachment to you became threatened. Therefore, you had to have a talk with him before all this.

“Anakin, sweetie, baby, my love,”

“Hm?” 

“Pookie pie. Boo bear. Apple of my eye.”

“Yes, Y/n. Cut it out with nicknames.”

You leaned over the couch where he was sitting and reading his war reports, looking at him sideways. “You know I love you, right?”

“I do...” He raised an eyebrow at you.

“Then you know that whatever happens at the ball, between me and the Prince, it means nothing.”

“What are you planning on doing, exactly?”

Now he was sitting up, alarmed. You hugged his head to your chest, kissing his cheek from behind to try and diffuse the situation.

“Nothing too elaborate. Just get him in a position where he has no choice but to tell me where and why he’s hiding Count Dooku.”

“I don’t like what you’re implying.”

“It’s nothing like that, Ani. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“But he might.”

“I won’t let it get that far.”

“You’d be surprised how hard it is to control someone in a situation like that.”

“You speak from experience?”

“No-- no of course not. I just don’t want you to be in that position.”

“Anakin, I know how to handle myself.”

He was rigid beneath your arms, quiet.

“This wasn’t supposed to be that elaborate.”

You drew patterns into the leather armor over his chest, as if you could draw the stress out through your fingertips.

“It’s not. I just thought I’d warn you, in case you see something you don’t like. I don’t want you to think I enjoy his presence, or him. I love you, and that’s all that matters at the end of the mission. Okay?”

“I still don’t like this,” he sighed, finally relaxing back into your arms. “But I trust you.”

“Thank you,” you kissed the top of his head, inhaling his scent. You could feel his unease, but both of you knew there was nothing you could really do to help the situation. You had to get the information out of the Prince, and he was notorious for favoring human women like you. The setup was perfect-- all you had to do was lure him in, set the trap, and then spring when the moment was right. You both knew you had it all under control, even if it did make Anakin nervous.

The one thing you didn’t really think about before agreeing to this, however, was the fact that you would have to dress up. Like… dress up, dress up. It was a formal ball, which meant the ladies had to wear gowns and men had to wear suits. You didn’t know much about fashion, and what was expected for this ball specifically, nor did you even own anything fancy enough to wear. So you went to Padme, who more than gladly lent you a dress that was both elegant and sexy… more so than was probably appropriate.

It was a necessary evil.

Step one was getting the dress, and that part was over. Now began the more difficult phase of the mission: actually putting on the dress and becoming that seductress, even though you had never really done anything like this before. Even more nerve-wracking— you’d have to face Anakin, who had never seen you in anything but your daily clothes before. 

You looked at yourself in the mirror, smoothing your dress down again. It’s not like you had anything to be nervous about— you looked amazing. The dress clung to every inch of your body, the red hue of it popping out against your skin color. Your hair was styled and draped over your shoulders, and you had done your makeup dark and alluring. 

You were just nervous to see Anakin’s reaction… or was that excitement?

A buzzer startled you out of your train of thought, signaling that it was time to head down to the party. Anakin must be right outside, waiting for you. You took one last look in the mirror, and then turned to open the door.

The sight of him took your breath away, as per usual. He was dressed in a black suit, form-fitting and dark through and through. You’re not sure why he favored the black theme, but you’d be lying if you said it didn’t flatter him. He looked dangerous, and the tilted smirk he was giving you added to the bachelor aura. 

“Y/n…” he murmured, immediately fitting his hands around your waist. 

“Yes?” You asked when he didn’t continue. He held you a couple inches away, admiring every inch of you. You squirmed under his greedy eyes. “Do… do you think it’s good enough?” 

“Good enough?” He finally met your gaze, lifting his brows incredulously. “You’re enchanting.” 

Your cheeks flooded with heat, the intensity behind those words loaded with truth. His voice was low, slightly raspy as if he was holding himself back from dragging you into the room and having his way with you here and now, mission be damned. A big part of you wanted that, but a bigger part of you enjoyed standing here, being inspected as if you were the most beautiful girl in the galaxy under his intensifying gaze. 

The shift in Anakin’s eyes made you feel like you were on top of the world, like you could do anything. If he thought you were so beautiful when he looked like that… well, maybe you could do anything.

“You look incredible,” he breathed, sliding his hands further around your waist to pull you closer. It was only when he nudged your arms around his own waist did you realize what he was doing— he wanted you to feel the lightsaber he had under his suit jacket, reminding you of the mission, how he’d be watching and protecting you from afar.

You should have known before even opening the door that you would be watched every second of this ball, even now in the hallway of the palace. Something shady was going on on Krygo, and you two were the main targets.

“Let’s head down to the main event, yeah?” He suggested, pulling away and offering his arm. You gathered your composure and hooked your arm around his elbow, allowing him to lead you down the stairs, through the grand hall, and into the ballroom.

It was exactly what you’d imagined— a small orchestra on the stage, playing slow violin waltzes, elegant lace dresses spinning around the room, dress shoes tapping over glossy marble floors, and an overwhelming floral scent from the thousands of purple roses adorning the room. 

You spotted the Prince across the room— he was dressed in a delicate white suit, accented with silver and gold, black hair gelled back with a single curl hanging over his forehead. He was striking, but in a different way— a mischievous way. Those mossy eyes were hiding something. 

The Prince stopped the whole room with a raise of his glass. He tilted it toward Anakin and you, thanking him for his service to himself and the planet. A murmur of gratitude travelled around the room, and his glass lowered. The ball resumed, but the Prince’s eyes stayed locked in your direction— this time, landing directly on you. He flicked his head, motioning for the two of you to approach.

“You have your knife with you?” Anakin grit between his teeth as he led you toward him.

The arm that wasn’t hooked onto Anakin’s brushed by your side, feeling the minuscule lump of the knife you had slid into the band around your thigh. Your dress had a slit on that leg, providing you easy access for when the time came to use it. 

“I’m all set,” you whispered back. He looked at you quickly, his eyes full of hesitance and fear. It was gone in a blink.

“Anakin Skywalker,” the Prince purred as the two of you approached. The rest of his company filtered away. “Or should I say, General Skywalker?”

“Please, Anakin,” he smiled, charming as ever. 

“How are you enjoying the ball so far? Does it live up to your Coruscant-ee standards?”

You didn’t like the Prince’s tone of voice. He had a playful lilt, as if everything he said was mocking, a game. It was irritating and unnerving, and made it seem like he knew something you didn’t. 

“I can’t say we have many dances at the Jedi temple,” Anakin answered coolly, accepting the drink that the Prince handed him. “But this far exceeds any expectations I might have had.”

“I’m glad you think so— you are the guest of honor,” the Prince bowed his head, lips curling impishly. “And for you, my lady,” he handed you a flute of champagne, similar to Anakin’s.

You took it, smiling sweetly in response. Inside, your nerves were firing out of control. You couldn’t do this— how were you supposed to flirt this man up with Anakin right next to you? It felt too unnatural, too wrong… You needed him to leave, and soon;  before the Prince dismissed you, and your only chance at getting him alone for the night was gone.

“I regret coming off as ungrateful, but I believe I see Captain Wel-Solley. We haven’t talked since the battle of Geonosis. You don’t mind, do you?”

You sighed in relief as Anakin excused himself, unhooking his arm from yours.

“Of course not, go ahead,” the Prince encouraged, ushering him with a sweep of his hand. Anakin nodded once and left, fingers lingering on your arm. You knew what he meant by it— 

Be careful.

You took a sip of the champagne so you could have a moment to gather your thoughts before hurling yourself headfirst into this mess of a mission. The Prince was already looking at you as you lowered your glass.

“And what do you think of this ball, m’lady?”

“Call me Y/n,” you smiled a bit, leveling your gaze at him. “And I think it’s beautiful. I’ve never been to a ball this extravagant before.”

“So you’re experienced in gallant culture?”

“My mother was princess of Fauna, before the Separatists took over,” you lied. “I grew up in a palace much like this one.”

You’re not sure where that story came from, but you always were a terrific liar. You knew you needed to find a level ground with him, create some kind of unifying factor between the two of you. Why not choose his status? You trusted your gut to just go with it.

“The daughter of a Princess. So that makes you… what? A princess as well?”

“I’d assume so,” you laugh prettily. “It’s no matter to me. I’m not bound by a royal lifestyle anymore.”

“So what do you do? Travel with Republic war generals to keep their morale up?” 

“Actually, I’m more of a diplomat,” you swirled the champagne around in your glass, feigning absent-mindedness. “I negotiate treaties, keep the peace when possible.”

He tilted his head, scanning your figure. You could see the appreciating glint in his eye but pretended not to notice. Funnily enough, his face was his weakness. While his voice and demeanor gave you the impression he was spinning a trap around you, his face gave away all of his emotions. You could almost read his thoughts— how you looked so enticing, elegant but teetered on the edge of scandalous. How could an outside like yours be paired with an inspiring, intelligent interior? And a member of royalty, at that? It must be too good to be true.

“Besides,” you continued nonchalantly, “you know the Jedi… their morales don’t require much upkeep.”

“Oh?” The Prince was intrigued. “And what are you implying?”

“Well, they teach against that sort of attachment,” you inform him, a sly smirk spreading across your lips. “A pity, really. It’s been a while since I’ve had any… fun.”

The Prince picked up on that quickly. His grin turned equally sinful, eyes darkening just a shade.

“Well, if you finish that drink, I’m sure we can find something more worthwhile to do.”

“Yeah?” You took a sip and bat your eyes innocently. “Like dancing?”

“Like dancing,” he confirmed, and you both laughed.

Got him.

You scanned the room for Anakin as you took your next sip, finding him dancing with an older woman by the window. He immediately turned to catch your eye, just barely nodding.

You swallowed the last of your champagne, setting it on a silver platter as the server walked by. “So where would you like to continue this?”

You attributed your newfound boldness to the alcohol in your system, as well as the high you got from your recent success. It was almost too easy how he fell into the palm of your hand, but you weren’t going to question it. Now, you had to get him all alone.

“My bedroom is quite large,” the Prince suggested. “There’s lots of room for dancing.”

“I’d hope,” you played along. “I can get quite… sloppy with my steps. No one ever taught me how to dance like a lady.”

“A princess with a dirty technique? I guess I’ll just have to teach you how to do it right.”

His arm stretched out to you, and there it was. Your golden ticket to success. You hooked your arm around his elbow, and he began to lead you out of the ballroom. Anakin’s eyes were palpable on your back as he watched you leave.

Just as you crossed the threshold, you began to feel funny. Your head grew light, vision blurring in and out. Your stomach dropped, and you suddenly felt very faint.

“Are you okay, m’lady?” The Prince paused. “You’re complexion has turned a little pale.”

“Excuse me, I’m alright,” you held onto his arm a little tighter so you wouldn’t fall. “My excitement is getting the best of me.” 

“I must admit, I’m just as eager.”

You continued on through the halls, but with each step your grew worse and worse. Before long, your knees could no longer hold you up, and you could barely see two feet in front of you. The last thing you saw before blacking out was the Prince smiling cruelly down at you as he lowered you to the cool, marble floor.

[davidcampiti]

A SCREENPLAY IS NOT A COMIC BOOK SCRIPT

I'm frustrated by writers who hire a comicbook artist then send a screenplay as their script.  My first question to them is, "Are you hiring one of our writers to adapt this into a comic book script?"  Usually they'll respond, "No that's the script to work from."

But it's not.  

Word balloons aren't broken out or numbered, SFX aren't identified, the pacing is wrong, and most panel descriptions are missing, causing the artist and the editor to do twice as much work without a corresponding increase in pay.

Here's a good article from Nick Macari about the differences --

I think you’d be hard pressed to find some work of fiction, some type of writing, that you could NOT turn into a comic. That is to say, you could create a comic from notes on bar napkins, a published novel, heck I bet you could even create a comic using nothing but a movie as the source material.

If you’re making a comic yourself, like literally by yourself, it doesn’t really matter how you do it… only the final product matters. If you have some crazy process that gets you a beautiful finished product, good on ya mate.

But for those writing spec scripts, trying to write for others, or trying to entice others to their project, it pays to create scripts that open doors instead of closing them.

In 2020, there are a million writers writing screenplays and pawning them off as comic scripts.

If you want to be one of those guys… as you were.

But if you actually want to write comics, if you want to be a comic book writer, you should learn how to write an actual comic book script, not how to sell some other script as one.

There are lot of useful technique comics can borrow from screenplays.

For the innocent novice writer, it’s understandable to see some technical execution confusion. But for working and professional writers, knowing what transfers over and what doesn’t separates the riff from the raff.

Before we get into it, let’s put to bed, once and for all, why a straight screenplay script is not a comic script. Here’s why;

Director Production Designer Art Director Costume Designer Cinematographer … Camera Assistant Director of Photography Scenic Artist Set Decorator Storyboard artist … Makeup artist Wardrobe stylist Assistant Director Production Assistant Production Coordinator Production Designer … Script Supervisor Sound Mixer Special Effects Coordinator

oh yeah, and actors.

These are a few of the people involved in a film.

Individual roles dedicated to a specific area of production. In essence, a screenplay can deliver fairly minimal information and it’s someone’s specific job to interpret that information, its context, and otherwise apply their knowledge, experience and skill, to turn that information into some tangible, successful element.

If you think it’s the artist’s job to fill all these roles, you’re crazy… and mean to artists.

Ok, you still here?

Good.

Let’s showcase some specific examples of why a screenplay doesn’t hold up for comics;

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

Drug Dealer I don’t…

Doyle Ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?

Drug Dealer What?

Doyle Did you ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?

Drug Dealer I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.

Doyle Were you ever in Poughkeepsie?

Drug Dealer No… yeah…

Doyle Did you ever sit on the edge of a bed, take off your socks and stick your fingers between your toes?

Drug Dealer Man, I’m clean.

Doyle You made three sales to your roaches back there. We had to chase you though all this shit and you tell me you’re clean?

Russo Who stuck up the laundromat?

Doyle How about that time you were picking your feet in Pougheepsie?

The drug dealers’ eyes go to Russo in panic, looking for the relief from the pressure of the inquisition.

Russo (in pain) You better give me the guy who got the old Jew or you better give me something or you’re just a memory in this town.

Drug Dealer That’s a lot o’ shit. I didn’t do nothin’.

14 dialogue exchanges, with for all intents and purposes not a single visual description (one minor one toward the end about the dealer’s eyes.). This is likely at least one page of comic with this volume of exchanges and dialogue, and there is literally, nothing cuing the artist as to how this should go down.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

Mutchie

That’s right, he couldn’t fight legit. One night at the Garden about 1950, ’51—he fought either Jake LaMotta or Gus Lesnevish, I think it was—he took one o’those cream puff punches in the sixth—the laziest left you ever seen—missed him entirely. Down goes Blackjack without even workin’ up a sweat and the whole Garden gets up on its feet and I swear to Christ, everybody starts singin’ “Dance with Me Henry.”

75 words. Way too much for a single panel.

How many ways can you break the dialogue into how many panels?

Is one way to break it up more effective than the others?

Because if it is, and that’s NOT the method you write up, you’re producing a less effective script.

But ultimately, what works in film as a 30 second monologue (doesn’t work in comics), would be far more effective as caption narration over flashback action.

THE EXORCIST

EXTERIOR – IRAQ- NINEVEH- DAY

The old man arrives back at that dig site in a small jeep. As he pulls up two armed guards rush out. When they see who it is the old man gives them a wave and they slowly walk back to there quarters. The old man walks up the rocky mound and sees a huge statue of the demon Pazuzu, which has the head of the small rock he earlier found. He climbs to a higher point to get a closer look. When he reaches the highest point he looks at the statue dead on. He then turns his head as we hear rocks falling and sees a guard standing behind him. He then turns again when he hears two dogs savagely attacking each other. The noise is something of an evil nature. He looks again at the statue and we are then presented with a classic stand off side view of the old man and the statue as the noises rage on. We then fade to the sun slowly setting as the noises lower in volume.

Hey! this has some nice direction, this screenplay stuff is perfect for a comic.

NO.

Let’s break it down;

The old man arrives back at that dig site in a small jeep. As he pulls up two armed guards rush out. When they see who it is the old man gives them a wave and they slowly walk back to there quarters. The old man walks up the rocky mound and sees a huge statue of the demon Pazuzu, which has the head of the small rock he earlier found. He climbs to a higher point to get a closer look. When he reaches the highest point he looks at the statue dead on. He then turns his head as we hear rocks falling and sees a guard standing behind him. He then turns again when he hears two dogs savagely attacking each other. The noise is something of an evil nature. He looks again at the statue and we are then presented with a classic stand off side view of the old man and the statue as the noises rage on. We then fade to the sun slowly setting as the noises lower in volume.

This passage is 15 beats, give or take. One beat a panel, 3-5 panels per page, we’ve got 3-5 pages of comic in this passage alone.

Hang on we’re not done.

If you fill your page with this type of description (you shouldn’t, but let’s say you did), you could get almost double that amount of beats. So one page of screenplay delivering nearly 6-10 pages of comic content!

Tell me, when was the last time someone delivering a screenplay “comic script,” delivered a 2 page script for a complete issue?    Never says I.

BONUS on this example:

Did y’all notice the soundtrack emphasis in this excerpt from the Exorcist script? Of course you can have sound effects in a comic, but no matter how you crack it, comics DO NOT have soundtracks. Relying on film soundtracks in a comic script is a sure fire way to deliver less effective scripts.

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA

JACK Alright, where’s my truck, Wang? I’m outta here. And my money, too.

WANG Forget about your truck, Jack. You don’t wanna go back there. You’ll have to go through the Wing Kong to get it. It’s insured, right?

JACK Of course it is. But that’s not the point.

WANG The smart man comes back for it later…

JACK The smart man calls the cops!

WANG Cops have better things to do than get killed.

We showed the typical lack of visual description a screenplay gives in the first example. [Screenplays tend to focus on the scene setup, then briefly hit key actions of the scene.] Here we have another example of missing visual description, but I point it out for something more specific–LACK OF EMOTIONAL context.

As I point out in the Writer’s Guide, Emotional content is one of the essential elements of each and every comic panel. So not only do we not have visual cues to support the action in the screenplay, but how are the characters delivering these lines!?

JACK Alright, where’s my truck, Wang? I’m outta here. And my money, too.

How many ways can you say this line?

I can say it pissed. Irritated. Fearful. Sarcastically. Comically.  Those are just a few that pop in my head… and I’m no actor.

Leaving emotional context open to interpretation undermines narrative control–in a big way.

A good, effective scene, could die a horrible misinterpreted death.

For the record, you can use parentheticals in a screenplay. This can give emotional context, like the one from Jack’s first line I omitted to make the example more effective

JACK (pissed off)

But where parentheticals do contain emotional context, you use them in a script sparingly. Just like you don’t tell the director how to do his job filling your screenplay with camera direction, you don’t try to tell the actors how to do theirs. (Remember, the answer to why Screenplays aren’t Comic Scripts, there’s a lot of people, hopefully professionals, bringing their expertise to the table.)

CASABLANCA

Ilsa Your secret will be safe with me. Ferrari is waiting for our answer.

At the bar Ferrari talks to a waiter.

Ferrari Not more than fifty francs though.

Ilsa and Laszlo walk up to him.

Laszlo We’ve decided, Signor Ferrari. For the president we’ll go on looking for two exit visas. Thank you very much.

Ferrari Well, good luck. But be careful. ( a flick of his eyes in the direction of the bazaar) You know you’re being shadowed.

Laszlo glances in the direction of the bazaar.

Screenplays live in movement. Unless you’ve got a static insert of a letter or photo or something, everything is in motion and there is constant change (even if subtle) from micro-second, to micro-second.

While comics work to capture movement (and  there are some tricks), it is ultimately a static medium, locked into showcasing moments frozen in time.

What I explain in the “works in movies not in comics article” is that the constant movement and motion, supported (primarily) by actors, but by the lighting people, the art direction people, director, etc. all gives depth and purpose to every single second of a film.

With all these people doing their job, a screenplay can give super general stage direction, like what we see here in this Casablanca excerpt.

At the bar Ferrari talks to a waiter.

Ilsa and Laszlo walk up to him.

Laszlo glances in the direction of the bazaar.

These trivial actions carry no narrative. They work in film because of performance and motion, which steps in to create narrative.Without performance and motion, a single frame captured from core stage direction translates to ineffective comic panels.

By the way, all the examples I’m giving here, are from solid movies. The big pink elephant in the room when writers deliver “comic screenplay scripts,” is that they assume they know how to write a good screenplay in the first place. Trust me, novice writers rarely do.

There’s a lot of technique and skill in writing a solid screenplay. And if you think a good screenplay causes problems converting to a comic, wait till you try it from a shitty screenplay.

Still thinkin’ screenplay is synonymous with comic script? Well you’re wrong sunshine, but what do I know?

I’m just a non-famous full-time mercenary writer, writing almost exclusively in comics and games for a decade or so. :p

I’ve spent a few hours writing this article, but there are plenty of other examples I haven’t touched on.

I’ll come back and add some more as I think of them in my down time. Maybe eventually when the list is so long it takes you a couple hours to read this article,  y’all get it through your noggins that comics are there own medium which demand the attention and respect of a unique format and writing approach. Something the comic book writers reading this, already know. #justsayin

About the Author — Nick Macari is a full-time freelance story consultant, developmental editor and writer, working primarily in the independent gaming and comic markets. His first published comic appeared on shelves via Diamond in the late 90’s. Today you can find his comic work on comixology, amazon and in select stores around the U.S.  Visit NickMacari.com for social media contacts and news on his latest releases.

[toothpastecanyon]

Noie’s Friends, Chapter 1

A collection of oneshots about Noie's years at college.

See most updated version on Archive of Our Own.

______________________________________________________________

Finding out your brother’s a demon was both more and less surprising than Noie expected. She didn’t anticipate how quickly everything would settle back into a routine; before she knew it, she was finding herself going to the tea shop with her friends, and hanging out with Dipper in her dorm whenever Val wasn’t home - or outside if she was. It felt just like before, only with Dipper right there with her instead of chatting through a screen.

Just like before. Just like before.

She never saw his eyes flicker. She never saw his wings. Sometimes he’d excuse himself to the bathroom for an hour, or disappear when Val burst through the door, but any hint that he was something more than Dipper Argenta was always tucked away behind a door, behind a nervous laugh and a change of the subject, out of sight, out of mind. It was surprising, how much he still hid from her.

Noie… didn’t know how to tell him it was okay. Part of her was a little relieved he was still keeping it under wraps; with remembering came old memories, old nightmares of a shadowy figure bursting from her brother and lunging for her, reaching in and ripping out… she’d never tell Dipper how many times she woke up sweating from those.

And then, to have that same shadow in her room, putting his wing around her, being her brother?

Look. Noie so badly wanted to say she’d be okay with it. She wanted more than anything in the world to tell Dipper he didn’t have to pretend to go to the bathroom to answer a summons. And maybe if Dipper hadn’t started pretending again, she’d have gotten used to it by now and it wouldn’t be a problem.

But she didn’t want to be wrong. She didn’t want to say it was okay and then see Alcor and not be okay and… hurt him. She didn’t want to hurt him, okay?

So maybe it was better, like this.

No surprises.

______________________________________________________________

“Boo. Hey, Silver.”

Things were winding down. Gus and Mina had already left the tea shop a while back, Jess had gone to the bathroom, and Mako was on his phone in the corner. The fading sun outside lent a warm, sleepy air to the whole scene; until Bea bumped her shoulder, Noie was feeling about ready to nod off.

“Silver.”

“Yeah?” She rubbed her eyes. “What’s, uh, up?”

“Just got a text from my roommate. AC’s busted.”

“What? Oh…” She looked outside. “Well, at least the sun’s gone down.”

“Nah, he just got home, he says it’s a million degrees in there.” With an enterprising grin, Bea slung an arm around her shoulder. “Lucky I got a friend to take me in for the night, eh?”

“Huh? Me?”

“That would be correct!”

“Wait, I just have one bed-”

“I’ll sleep on the floor. Trust me, I spent my childhood sleeping on elven barkrests, I’ll be fine.”

“Barkrests?”

“Have I never told you about those things?” She chuckled. “That’s a story for tonight. When I’m sleeping at your place. It’s happening, right?”

“Uh… I’ve never had someone stay overnight before.” Noie made a face. “I guess it’d be fine? Yeah… yeah, it’d be fun!”

“That’s the spirit! Now c’mon, let’s get it on!”

They walked out of the tea shop together. Noie nervously pointed the way, and flashed a smile at Bea as she followed along. Bea raised an eyebrow.

“What’s up with you, Silver?”

“Wh-what?”

“You look like I’ve put a gun to your head.” She slowed. “You know I can find somewhere else to stay, ri-”

“No! No, it’s okay! It’s good!”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yeah, no, I’m excited!” Noie barked a laugh. “I just - I don’t know how this works.”

“What’s ‘this’? Walking? Breathing? Existing?” Bea gave a crooked smile. “Sorry, couldn’t help myself.”

She laughed again at that… and then trailed off. They walked in silence for a little bit, and at some point the streetlamps turned on. Noie wondered if she wanted to say something more, wanted to mention that this was the first time she’d ever had a sleepover - ever had a friend who’d want to sleep over, actually, and wow, that was kind of sad. That’d bring down the mood.

She thought of that, and then cleared her throat. Opened her mouth.

“Jeez, there’s so many crickets out,” Noie said. “I’ve never actually seen a cricket. I’ve only heard them. They’re like ghosts, heh.”

“Man, you’re not missing out. They’re ugly fuckers - one jumped on my face once.”

“Haha, what?”

“Yeah. Let me tell you, everyone thinks it’s so awesome to be an elf and to be all ‘living with nature’ and shit, but this is what they don’t think about: all animals wanna be around you. All animals.”

“Oh. That sucks.”

“You don’t know the half of it, Silver.”

They walked on for a while, chatting as the sun strayed down. Only a dull glow remained as they made their way to the front door; Noie swiped her keycard, and motioned her inside.

“Thank-ye kindly.” Bea glanced around at the stairs branching off from the entrance hall. “Where do we go now? Up, down?”

“Down this one.”

“Ah, they shoved you in the basement.”

Noie snorted. “It’s not too bad. There’s still a little window. My roommate says- Oh shit, Val!”

“Strange thing she says.”

“I should- I hope she’s okay with this, I should’ve asked her, or…”

“Ah, don’t worry too much about it.” Bea slung an arm around her, kept her walking down the halls. “Best lesson you’ll ever learn, Silver: don’t ask permission, ask forgiveness.”

“That’s not- I don’t like that. I don’t think that’s a great lesson, actually.”

“Well sure, you gotta know to use it in the right context. Isn’t your roomie the one who doesn’t clean up her shit and makes you do it?”

Noie was fumbling for her keys. “Yeah, that’s her.”

“Then she’s been asking for a looot of forgivenesses. Let’s say she owes you this one.”

They were approaching Noie’s room. She fished her key out of her bag, and shot Bea a look as she unlocked it.

“Okay… I’m still gonna text her, though.”

“Good, I wasn’t sayin’ you shouldn’t.” Bea strode through the open door as Noie got out her phone. “Aww, look at this place! I didn’t know they made apartments smaller than mine - oh, hey Val. It’s Val, right?”

Val? Noie glanced up from her phone. She was never home this early - was she here? She hurried into the room after Bea, and came across…

Oh.

Oh.

Dipper was sitting at her computer, an expression of pure shock on his face at the sight of someone other than her. He was going to be a little harder to explain.

“Or, uh, some other name?” Bea asked, and chuckled awkwardly at the ensuing silence. “Any other name?”

“This is Dipper,” Noie cut in. “He’s my brother.”

“Oh, he’s visiting again? Sweet, it’s great to meet you, man. She’s told me a lot about you.”

Bea gave Dipper an easy smile, but Noie noticed how he didn’t return it at all. It wasn’t shock anymore; a different expression had shadowed his features, one that sent a shiver down her spine.

After just a split second too long, he smiled widely, too widely, and rose from his chair. Stuck out his hand.

“Hello,” he said, and narrowed his eyes when she took his hand. “Went right in for the handshake, huh?”

“Yeah? You offered it to me-”

“Beatrice, right?” He kept shaking. “Beatrice Delion. Nice name you’ve got this time round.”

“Do you know me from somewhere?”

“You could say that.”

“I could say that, I could say anything.” Bea bared her smile. “I asked you a question, though.”

“A question you already knew the answer to.”

“A question you could’ve really just answered like a normal fucking pers- augh!”

“Dipper!” Noie yanked Bea’s hand out of his grip. “What was that for?”

He didn’t respond. He didn’t look at her; he stared past her, to Bea cradling her fingers, with a strange gleam in his eyes Noie could only describe as… predatory. Her heart caught in her throat, and she tried to shove him towards the bathroom.

“Hey, why don’t you, uh, take a breather, bro?” She nudged, then elbowed, then pushed, but he wouldn’t move. “Seems like you two got off on the wrong foot.”

“He got off on the wrong foot, you mean.” Bea chuckled; there was an edge to it. “And here I was thinking you’d be a cool guy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Means that you’re acting like an asshole, man! Take notes, that’s how you answer a question!”

“How-”

“Dipper.” Noie grabbed his arm, and finally he looked at her. “Go to the bathroom.”

“Fine. Come with me, I have to-”

“No. You go to the bathroom, okay?”

“Naomi-”

“Go.”

Dipper glared at her, and for one terrifying moment, Noie thought he wasn’t going to leave. Finally, he turned around, and with a low but rumbling growl, he stalked out of the room.

A growl. The sound turned her blood to ice, and she stood there frozen until Bea put a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, not to push an issue or anything, but he’s not staying here tonight, right?”

“What? Oh…” Noie hesitated. “No, he, uh… he has a hotel room.”

“Sweet, ‘cause I wasn’t gonna stay a night with him. Prick.”

She cringed. “Bea, I, I’m so sorry. That wasn’t okay of him at all, I-I don’t even know what-”

“Don’t even stress it, Silver. Trust me, I don’t care. I know how to handle his type.”

Noie felt something at that. It came down on her like a dark cloud, a watchful eye… a presence. Bea gave her a squeeze, and grinned.

“Now, let’s do something fun together, eh? What does the great Silver like to do on her time off?”

“O-on my time off?”

“I assume you don’t stand there waiting for the sun to rise, but that’s not for me to judge.”

“Oh, heh, no…” Noie glanced behind her, and then cleared her throat. “I mean, I don’t do too much, I’m usually on my computer… I dunno, I read, I guess. What about you?”

“Whaddya read?” Bea sifted through the titles on her shelf. “Heh, ‘Rainbow Adventures of Mr McStabberson’? Where’ve I heard that one before?”

“You’ve probably seen the TV show. Did you know it actually started from a book?”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, I actually only read the source material pretty recently.” She sat down in her chair. “It’s interesting, actually. I think they’re both kinda good in different ways? Like there’s definitely more about some of the side characters in the book, like Alexy and-” She blinked. “Oh, sorry, I’m rambling. Have you seen the show?”

“Nope.” Bea leaned against the wall, grinning. “I wanna hear about it, though.”

“Really?”

“Hell yeah. Keep going, Silver.”

Noie smiled at that, and launched back into her explanation. For a little while as she talked, the thought of Dipper’s odd behaviour and the presence had entirely slipped her mind.

“-so it was really cool how they expanded on her character in the book. Obviously books aren’t really strapped for time like TV shows are so I get why they dropped some of the smaller character moments, but I think it’s cool to watch the show again with those in mind.” Noie laughed a little. “If you ever wanted to watch it.”

“Hey, seems like some cool new human shit. Wanna watch it right now?”

“Wh- really? I don’t think I can stream it anymore-”

“It’ll be pirated somewhere.” Bea sat down at her computer. “Seriously, I can’t believe you guys’d pay to watch it when there’s a free version floating out there.”

“I dunno, viruses?” She raised an eyebrow at Bea. “You know where to go, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Cool. Well, I guess, if I really wanted something, I’d ask…”

Dipper. Noie made a face at that; it must have been pretty obvious, because Bea looked over at her and gave a wry smile.

“Your brother’s the tech savvy one, eh?”

“Tech savvy? Uh, sure… you could say that.”

“I see you’re a fan of that phrase too.”

“Wha- oh! Oh, sorry-”

“Ah, don’t you worry about it. I’m teasing you! I’m teasing.” Bea sat back in her chair, chuckling a little as her smile faded. Her eyes, fixed on the computer screen, suddenly flitted up to meet hers. “You said he’s got classes up at SASU, right.”

“Dipper?”

“No, a squirrel. Of course I meant Dipper.”

“Oh, heh, sorry.” Noie fiddled with the front of her shirt; this was getting into some dicey territory. “Yeah, he, uh, takes online courses, mostly?”

“I see, I see.”

“Yeah… so he can come up and visit a lot. That’s why. That’s why he can do that, I mean.”

Bea was nodding. “I see. So he’s here a lot of the time with you, huh.”

There was a strange tension to the air, building the more she spoke. Noie found herself shivering a little, though she wasn’t cold.

“Yeah! Yeah, he is.” She leaned forwards with her widest smile. “So, how are we-”

“Does he act like that a lot?”

A sudden spike. The walls felt closer, and the lights felt starker. Bea’s carefully blank expression suddenly had an air of menace, of danger to it, and Noie leaned back.

“L-like what?”

“You know what.” Bea said, and sighed. “Look, I’m not trying to corner you in anything. I’m just wondering how happy you are with a brother who comes around and acts like that around your friends, y’know?”

Noie felt a pit in her stomach. “Wh- oh, oh no, Bea… you have the wrong idea, okay?”

“Okay.”

“He’s not usually like that, I swear. Like, genuinely, he’s not, I’m gonna talk to him about that later, I…”

“Okay. Seriously, it’s okay. You know your brother better than me.” Bea stretched, slowly, deliberately. “Just wanted to say, you better talk to him about this weird eavesdropping enchantment he’s got going on, too.”

Eavesdropping enchantment. It was like the air froze in place, and Bea gave a wry smile at her wince.

“That’s the one. Bet you barkskin he’ll come through that door any moment-”

The door burst open like an explosion; it made her flinch. She hardly recognised the figure who stormed into the room, pointing fingers, yelling, “I am ņot̶ eavesdropping!”

(and was that the hint of an echo to his voice?)

“I mean, I’d love to agree, but you’re really just proving yourself wrong by barging in-”

“I did not!” He planted himself between Bea and Noie, and stabbed a finger in her face. “I’m here to protect my sister. What are you doing here? What are your intentions?”

Bea raised her eyebrows. “My intentions? Getting somewhere to sleep. Sorry if you were expecting me to say murder, I guess I’m not in the mood.”

“You watch what you’re saying. You have no idea what you’re up against.”

“Oh-hoh, is that a threat?” She chuckled. “Look, human, I get you were top of your magic class in highschool or whatever, but you and your - eh, half -decent - eavesdropping charm aren’t gonna do squat against me.”

Noie could practically see the fury emanating off of her brother. She tried to tug at his sleeve, but it was like he’d stopped paying attention. He was wound up tight, and stone cold to the touch.

“Just walk away, man. Your sister doesn’t want your stupid fucking ‘protection’ bullshit.”

Noie shook her head at her. “Bea-”

“Why don’t you try listening to what she wants?” Bea leaned back in her chair. “You know, if you care about her or whatever.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Noie felt it like a physical pain; she recoiled as Dipper stepped forwards.

“I car͜e ab̛o̵u͝t my̢ si̡şt̷er.”

“Oh, yeah? Then why don’t you prove i-”

And in the blink of an eye, Alcor the Dreambender had her by the throat. Noie watched in horror as his shadowy form snarled and slammed her against the wall so hard it cracked; in a millisecond Bea’s face went from shock to anger to eyes-bugged-out terror.

“M̞͈I̛͕̤̟̹̞Z͎̠A̳̭̪͙͖Ŗ̸̩̮̤͈̭͈ ҉҉̼̺͙̰I̞͔͍͚͕͕͢S̸̞̤͙̜̖͝ ̺̗̘M̥̥͈̬͓͟I͏̤̮N̪͈̺̥̗̘͘͟ͅͅE. M̶̸̦̹͖̜̣̳̤͘ͅI̧̛̼̟͉̞N̴̜͢E. ” He pressed harder, and she struggled for air. “Ḭ̸̺̺̫̟̦̲͇͉ ̥͇̯̣͕S͝͏͓̼E̻̺̲̼E̢̻ ҉̨͚̞̖W̖̘͝Ḩ̢̭̙̰̼̺̮̜A̩͚͓͉͔̤ͅͅT͖͖̩ ̞̗̭̰͓̫̰͍͠Y̳̙͝O̧̨͕͙͕͇͝ͅU̮̺̰͟ͅ'̥̪̣͙R̘̙͇̼ͅE̛͇ ̲͖D͇̖Ǫ͇̮̳̭̫̖͔̼̕I̦͙̫̭̭̯N̶̥̳̖̤̬̱͈͝G̳̳̩̝͠, ̴͇͉͇͖̼͍̰̠̕B̸I̢L̺̰͟Ļ͇͔̺͔̘̝ͅ Ç̬̗̤͕̜I̶̛͖̗̝͙P̸̛̭͔̖͓͎͍͎̦̤͡H̛͚̦̻͉̦͇͝E̲̤̹͓͠R̤̺̬̳̭. I҉̶̲̼ͅ ̝̖͠Ṣ̴̩͜͞ͅ��̲E͏͏̸͓̥͙̲̟̮̤̙͓E̝͠ ҉͈̱Y̧̫̳͖͙͔O̵̩̤̲U͉̬̣̺'̜̼̹͘͟R̘̠̻͡͠E̵̖͇̣̠̦̩̹̹̻̠̫̥͝ͅͅ T͕R͖̩͓̘̪̙͞͞ͅY̡͉̳͖̙͔̺̬̫͟I̴̘̞̮͜͠N̶͓G͙͉̼͎̰͕͘͟ ͞͝͏̖T̷̛͕̞̰̟̥̥͖͍O͚̙̰̞̟̙͡ ̙̫͍̜͓ T̛̻̲̭U̧͇̣̻̭̠ͅR̟̖͠ͅN̞͚̠̝͙͚̠̼ ̵̛̫̗̗͕͜H̴̷̛̱̖̥̤̼̲̤E̩̰͉̪̠͟ͅŖ̻̗̻͔͡ͅ ̱̖A̵̫̻̘̭͕̘̩͢G̤A҉̳͈I̧̤͍̹̰̖̩̩͙͠N̼S̨̘̩̪̜͎̖̭T͙͚ ̷͠͏̩̱̖̳M̸̡̞̻̥͎͓͙E̶̫͕̘!̘̹̘͢”

  Noie could barely comprehend what she was seeing. Bea shot her a terrified look and she tried to speak up… but nothing came out. She tried again.

“Di… Dipper…”

Bea was going red in the face. Noie picked up something from the desk - her phone.

“Dipper, stop. Dipper.” She clenched it with a shaking fist, “Dipper, STOP!”

And threw it as hard as she could at the back of his head. It shattered off of his shoulder, and he looked to her with the glowing eyes she saw in her nightmares - oh, stars, oh stars, oh stars…

“Y-you’re killing her, Dipper. You’re killing her!” Noie struggled to look him in the eye. “She didn’t do anything wrong, I-I don’t know why you’re acting this way! Just let her go!”

“Mi̶̛͜za̴r-”

“Please! Please, j-just let her go.”

Alcor the Dreambender stood there for one moment longer, one awful moment longer with the sound of Bea kicking against the wall as she struggled for air. Then he blinked, and stepped back. He let her crumple to the ground, and Noie could feel his eyes on her as she dove to her friend’s side.

“Bea, I-I’m so sorry, are you okay!?”

She tried to rasp out some answer, but it was lost in a coughing fit.

“Oh, my stars. Oh my stars.” Noie felt for her phone. “I’m gonna- I’m gonna call for someone-”

“No…” Bea put her hand out. “I…” she managed, and coughed as she sat up. “I’ll be…”

“No, lie down-”

“Like hell I’m ly-y-ing here.” She pushed Noie aside and staggered to her feet. “Not with…”

She pointed at Alcor as she made for the door. Noie could hardly look at him; he stood still as she followed Bea out of the room.

“Hey, wait! Bea!”

Bea glanced over at her. “You tryin’ to wake up the whole wing, or what?”

“Wh- I…”

“Look, Si- Silv-” She coughed and rubbed her neck. “I don’t know what kinda shit you’re mixed up in, but… we’ll talk later, okay? I gotta find somewhere else to stay tonight.”

“I-”

“I’m not gonna tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not dumb enough to piss off Alcor the Dreambender… more than I already have, apparently. Fuuck.”

“That’s not what I was…” She stepped forwards. “I’m sorry, Bea, I-I didn’t… I… I can explain-”

“We’ll talk later. Just-” Bea held her hands out. “We’ll talk later, okay? Bye.”

And then she turned a corner and was gone, her footsteps thudding in Noie’s mind like the beat of her heart. She stood there for a moment, eyes staring, mind buzzing, every fiber of her being wishing for this to have all been a dream, for this to have turned out any other way.

Her first night over, with her first real friend, and this happened.

She clenched her fists.

Dipper.

His presence was still there, still watching. She wanted to scream right then and there; it took all her effort to take a deep breath, walk back down the hall, and enter her dorm room.

It was empty. And dark - darker than plain darkness. She jabbed the light switch.

“Dipper.” Noie walked forwards. “We have to talk. Now.”

Nothing, for a moment. She opened her mouth to say something else, but-

“I-I’m here,” Dipper came in through the front door. He looked entirely human again - human, and nervous. “So, uh-”

“What the fuck was that.”

“Yeah… That wasn’t, um, great of me-.”

“‘Wasn’t great of you’, that’s all you’re gonna say for that? Jeez, I don’t wanna hear what a bad day is for you if that is just ‘not great.’” She laughed angrily. “I mean, what the fuck, Dipper! You strangled her!”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to hear about how you know, I wanna know what on earth possessed you to do that! Is that just a thing you do? Are you gonna kill all my friends, or is Bea just lucky?”

“It’s- I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” Dipper avoided his eyes. “I just… got surprised.”

“Got sup-?!”

“No! No, that’s- that’s a bad way of explaining it! Sorry. Sorry, it’s just…” His voice lowered. “a demon thing, I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to, want to hear about, uh, that kinda stuff…”

Noie felt a cold pit in her stomach as he trailed off. A demon thing… her mind flashed back to all the other times that part of her brother had come into play, had hurt people… had killed . Maybe it wasn’t like she was thinking.

“Just tell me why, Dipper.”

“It… it is your friend. You’re right, she’s special, kinda.” He gave a tense chuckle. “Look, um, it’s hard to explain, but her soul, she came in the door and I recognised it.” His fists clenched. “It… belonged to a bad person, a long time ago.”

She frowned. “Dipper, Bea’s been nothing but nice to me since we met. She’s not a bad person-”

“You’re right, she’s probably not! I overreacted, I just- I wasn’t expecting to come across that soul! Usually I can… prepare, to meet that one.” He stared into the middle distance. “An elf, this time around. Strong control of magic, clearly trained in shielding… no wonder I didn’t notice her.” A grimace. “I really hope she’s a good person this time around, that’s… formidable. Have to keep my eye on her.”

Noie made a face. “Dipper…”

“Sorry. I’m sorry, I’m doing it again.” He sighed. “Look, I really am sorry for what I… what I did to your friend. I swear, though, that was a very, very unexpected event. You’re not gonna see me like that again.”

That was a little reassuring… but a sentence jumped out at Noie. She raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean, see you like that?”

“Well… you know.” He mimed something coming out of his back. ‘Like that, you know. My, uh, business attire.”

“Your demon form?” She watched him cringe at that. “You think that’s what bothered me about what happened?”

“Well, not the main thing, but I know… I know it does.”

Noie blinked. “It doesn’t.”

“It’s okay if it does-”

“It doesn’t!” She snapped. “We’ve been over this, I get you’re a demon! What kind of sister would I be if I decided that made me uncomfortable?”

He just looked at her.

“Dipper, it doesn’t! It…” Noie swallowed. “I don’t want you to be scared of sharing stuff like this with me! I don’t want you to hide it, I… I think it makes it scarier. When I don’t know things about you.”

He just looked at her, with that ancient expression. A million alarm bells went off at the being who stood before her; she tried to talk past them, tried to talk to Dipper.

“Because there’s so much I don’t know about you. There’s so much you don’t tell me about you, and I get that it’s probably hard, that you think I don’t want to hear it, but then…” She gestured. “Stuff like this happens, and I don’t know how to react! I don’t know why you’re doing it, I don’t know how to help you… I-I don’t know you, all of a sudden! You’re just a demon, doing demon stuff, a-and that’s scary!”

Noie’s shoulders hurt; she forced them down, forced herself to close her eyes, and take a deep breath. She looked at the floor.

“I don’t… I don’t want to be scared of you, Dipper. I’m sorry that I still… kinda am.” She hugged herself. “I just… I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Dipper didn’t say anything, for a long moment. She stood there, staring down, down at the carpet.

“Noie.”

She didn’t meet his eyes, could hardly bring herself to look higher than his shoes.

Dress shoes, she noticed. Black ones, and black pants. She drew in a breath.

“Noie,” Alcor said. “Do you want a hug?”

She hesitated, and then nodded. The shoes moved, and a second later, a pair of arms wrapped around her. They were longer than Dipper’s usually were, attached to a body taller than Dipper usually was… but they were just as gentle, squeezed just as hard.

She pressed her face into his suit, and mumbled, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I mean it.” She gave him a squeeze. “I wanna be better about this demon stuff. I don’t want you to feel like you gotta hide stuff from me, I wanna know my bro. Even if it gets weird at times.”

“I’m not so sure you want to know everything, Noie.”

“Well… I wanna know important stuff. I wanna know if you have any more souls you randomly hate, for one.” She tried for a chuckle. “I guess… I wanna know what you’d tell any other Mizar. I don’t wanna get the kid gloves, you know?”

Dipper didn’t answer that. For a moment, Noie thought he wasn’t going to, but then she felt a pair of something that wasn’t hands wrap around her midsection. It felt like two weirdly warm blankets, it was… wings?

Oh, yeah. His wings. The feeling of them still made her a little jittery, but she gave a little laugh.

“Yeah,” she said. “Stuff like that.”

“Heh, alright.”

“Are you laughing at me?”

Dipper chuckled. “No.”

“You big jerk!” She snorted and smacked his arm. “You did that to make me jump, didn’t you!”

“Maybe a little.”

“Ohhh, my stars.” Noie grinned up at his toothy smile, his twinkling gold-on-black eyes. It was different, but it was Dipper. “I’ll get you back for this. I’m gonna dump glitter on your wings.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, I’ll catch you when we’re studying, or - no, I’m not gonna tell you when I do it. You just wait.”

“Hah, I will. I’d like to see you try.” Dipper said, and then: “Hmm, not sure if I can even start having my wings out while we study. I mean, you still have your roommate coming in at random, and-”

“Yo No-ster, I’m home!” Val burst through the door with a pizza box. “Do you know math? I have this stupid thing due at 11:59 and-”

She noticed the demon standing in the centre of the room, and stopped dead. Noie tried for a wave.

“Oh, hi, Val! You’re back, uh, early… have you met Dipper? He’s a, uh, cosplayer. Twin Souls.”

“No, I am not. Noie-”

“Sorry, I couldn’t think of anything else- Uh, haha, anyway, he’s…” She kept grinning at Val’s horrified expression. “It’s, uh… so, what pizza did you get? Pepperoni? Mmm, smells great!”

______________________________________________________________

“So they just let you move in, huh?”

Dipper was hanging suits in what used to be Val’s side of the closet. “Yeah, basically. It was even easier than usual, since Dipper Argenta already exists - only had to forge a few things.”

“Only a few things, huh.” Noie snorted at him from atop her bed. “As you do.”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing.” She grinned at him. “Good to share a room with you again, bro. I missed it… or maybe I just missed not living with Val, hah!”

Dipper chuckled at that, and turned back to folding his clothes. His wings swayed a little as he worked, and she found herself staring at them. They were strange things; every time she saw them, they were a little different, and today they were wide and sloping things that framed his head when they were folded up against his back. There was always a tinge of unreality to them - a voidlike, blacker-than-black colour to them that made it impossible to pick out any detail, made looking at them… a little mesmerising.

“Need something?”

Noie blinked. “Uh, no,” she said, and tore her gaze away. “No, you’re good.”

“Alright, then.” Dipper snuck her a grin. “This is kinda, kinda fun, hanging up clothes! I should do this more often!”

Her phone buzzed. She looked down.

“Well, you can do my closet, uh, any time, bro…” She unlocked it. “Oh.”

“What?”

“Bea got back to me!”

“Oh, cool! She’s outside, then?”

“Yeah!” Noie looked at the text. “It says… ‘I’m here, can’t wait to hear how the fuck you got a demon for a brother. PS…”

“P.S. what?”

“She’s saying not to tell you this joke.”

Dipper frowned. “What does it say?”

“Uh… ‘P.S. - make sure your brother clips his nails before he gets down here, would feel much nicer on the neck. P.P.S - That was a joke, please don’t actually tell him that, I don’t want to die.’”

She looked up after that, and sniggered when her brother rolled his eyes.

“I’m not gonna kill her over a bad joke.”

“It’s not a bad joke, she just got you.”

“She did not! She-” He huffed and fluttered his wings. “Whatever, let’s go.”

“Yeah, she got you, bro! Look, you’re blushing!”

“I’m not!”

“iiiiii’m nooooot!”

“I’m not!” He shook his head at her. “Are you ready? She’s waiting outside.”

“I just gotta get my shoes on.” Noie hopped off the bed and… tried to poke his wing; she ended up just gesturing at it. “I dunno why you’re, uh, getting on my case, you’re way less ready.”

“It takes five seconds to put on a human suit. Look,” There was a snap as Noie put on her shoes. “Noie, look. Noie.”

“I’m looking, I’m looking.” She shoved her feet into sneakers and looked over. “You missed a spot.”

“Where?”

“Riiiight abouuuut…” She jabbed his side. “Here!”

“Aaah! St-stop tickling me, hah! Noie!”

“Alright, alright…” She stopped, and took a moment to straighten his suit. He was looking at her with those familiar brown eyes she was seeing less of these days; after a moment, she remembered to smile back. “Alright. You ready to do a lot of explaining?”

“Readier than I usually am with stuff like this.” He snorted to himself. “You, uh, want me to tesser you down there? I can do that, it’ll be faster than taking the stairs.”

Noie hesitated at that. He noticed; quickly, he added:

“We don’t have to. Just, uh, offering.”

“No, that’s good, that’s… my phone’s buzzing.” Noie pulled it out. “Bea says, um, ‘I’m summoning your brother myself if you make me wait. Maybe I’ll die, but I wanna hear the storyyyyy-’, and a lot of y’s.” She looked back at Dipper, and gave a smile. “Maybe we should go the fast way.”

“Alright.” He offered a hand, and she took it, watched as his eyes flickered to that gold-on-black. “Hold on tight.”

And she did. She closed her eyes, squeezed her brother’s hand, and let him work his magic.

[elderbwrry]

Even if he doesn't say so - Chapter 2/?

Kylo/Hux/Poe Witcher AU

Chapter summary: The trouble with trinkets is they make people jealous. Or maybe that's just Kylo.

Chapter 1 here, 2 below or on Ao3, 3

Wordcount: 2029

Kylo raised his sword and brought it down fiercely on the horrible carnivorous vines he'd been hired to clear out of the local village's moor edge. The things had already munched their way through a cow and half a sheep, and the villagers were worried a child would be next. Perhaps to his own detriment, Kylo wasn't really all that interested in the reasons why he'd been hired; he was far more interested in the coin he'd get out of the experience, and the opportunity to really let loose some destructive energy.

Of course, Kylo had been trained well in fencing, dagger fighting, stave fighting and in hand to hand combat, but for his typical work, he favoured the longsword. The weight of it felt so right in his hands, the swing of it, the sharp edge or the blunt hit, the way it gleamed red after drawing blood. For most monsters, it worked perfectly well, but even then the necessity to dodge or force down some kind of potion usually took the pleasure out of the pure heft behind it. These vines, however, were easy game. They thrashed, shot out poisonous barbs, but mostly they stayed in one place. That meant Kylo could swipe the metal through them with abandon, and still be assured he'd meet his mark.

He hacked and slashed, let a furore course through his veins and out into his surroundings, over and over and over through whatever fleshy leaf, woody stem, fibrous buds he could reach with metal and intensity. When finally he let his sword drop to trail its point through the under-brush at his side, it was carnage. He went around the area, plunging the blade as deep as it would go into each root stump until he was satisfied that nothing was living, before stalking away from the destruction.

Chest heaving, he found a flat, dry piece of ground and lay down, looking up at the clouds and basking in the feeling of action still tingling through his arms, into his fingers, out into the earth and the air around him. He felt connected – to the ground he was lying on, to the source of his own power, without being worried he was lost in the force of a potion. This was all him.

Back in the village, when they'd described to Kylo what he was out to fight, Hux had listened carefully and given a fancy academic name for the vines. Kylo stuck with the common name, shrugging and standing to head off immediately. Hux had reprimanded him and delayed him until he'd found an anti-toxin potion to order Kylo to take before engaging the things, which Kylo had ignored. Now, looking down at his legs and seeing several barbs sticking out of them, Kylo again heard Hux telling him, “They have poisonous thorns, you know,” in exactly that tone that could piss him off just as much as it could make him want to pounce on Hux and make his annoyance known by ripping a few tunic seams in the process.

Still, the mage was right, as per fucking usual.

Kylo hauled himself up to sit, drew the potion out of a pocket and downed it, picking the barbs out while he waited for it to take effect. The pricks tingled a bit, but it wasn't anything too bad, certainly not to the severity that Hux's wariness had suggested. Though it was nice that he'd given him the potion. It felt like being looked out for.

He let his mind drift to how Hux and Poe would be doing. The mage was likely offering common-sense medical advice to the villagers in the most deadpan delivery possible, or flicking through one of the books he'd brought with him in his seemingly bottomless bags. Poe had been eager to do his usual thing and perform a little in the tavern. His voice was so wonderful, Kylo found himself thinking, the sparkle in his eyes as he reached the punchline of a bawdy tune, and the way he could command a room, tell a story better than anyone else before...

Well, Kylo should be getting back.

He stood, gave the area one last cursory look for any vines he'd missed, and, seeing nothing, turned to go. He was just sheathing his sword when he stopped, eyes catching on a clump of cheerful orange and white flowers which had managed to survive his visit, just on the edge of the carnage.

“Hmm.”

When Kylo returned to the village tavern and gave Poe those same flowers, Poe's face lit up with a smile. “Well, don't I feel special.”

Kylo noticed Hux eyeing them. Shit, had he done something wrong? “They're not poisonous too, are they?” he asked.

Hux seemed to snap out of some kind of reverie. “No, they're... they're just normal flowers. Excuse me,” he stood from the table he was sat at and made for the stairs.

If Kylo didn't know better about Hux's taste in “useless gestures” like flowers, he would have thought he should have brought Hux some as well.

[break]

They stopped at the next city. Kylo wasn't sure they should stay – there were no contracts of the style he took, and, in his opinion, staying pointlessly at a place like this was a recipe for trouble – but Poe wanted to get some supplies and try out a some new material with a more cosmopolitan crowd, and Hux claimed he had someone he wanted to visit, so stay they did.

Hux disappeared off into the bustling crowds early in the morning, and, later, Poe dragged Kylo off to the market. Kylo started to suspect he was only there so that Poe could make him carry things, which would grate on him usually, but he found didn't mind all that much, since it meant he got to spend time with the bard.

Poe was a people person, a fact which Kylo had always known, but it was never so clear as when he was not trying actively to entrance people as he did when performing – somehow not putting it on made it all the more obvious this was just him. He would flash charming grins to the women and manoeuvred through the crowds with an ease Kylo was jealous of.

For his own part, Kylo always felt the need to keep his hood low, to keep out of sight, even going so far as to cast a glamour some witch had taught him years ago. It was a weak thing, but eyes slid off him like water droplets off a bird. With Poe, however, he didn't need it; the man was so magnetic as it was, there was barely anyone who would bother to stare at anyone else. (Kylo included himself in that number.)

Finally, they came to a stand selling all sorts of gold and silver jewellery, pretty trinkets, gemstones on cords. One brooch caught Poe's eye – a dragon. “This is some amazing craftsmanship,” he noted, striking up an easy conversation with the stall keeper. When the man had to tend to another customer, he turned back to Kylo. “I'd love to fly. Do you think I'd be a good dragon?”

“You'd be great,” Kylo told him honestly. He was certain Poe would command the skies, given half the chance, and push back against the hunters until the entire Continent was dragon territory once again. The mental image morphed into one of Poe in front of a victory banner, the name of a great flying lizard no more than an epithet used by the forces he'd become leader of. It was a good look in him; he may not want to be in charge of his home kingdom, but with a cause like that, and people to follow him, he could be formidable. Lost in the daydream of Poe as some kind of dragon king of the skies, Kylo pointed at the brooch. “Do you want to get that?”

Poe looked at it thoughtfully, enough that Kylo could see the conflict in his thoughts. “Nah,” he said eventually, “it's expensive and... I have stuff at home.” He began walking away, and Kylo trailed after him, thinking it was a pity – the brooch would look so wonderful on him. “Maybe I could get Hux to transfigure me or something,” Poe mused, a glint of humour in his eye as Kylo blanched.

“I'm not sure that's how it works...”

“Imagine it though. Flap flap, blagh, I'm a dragon.”

[break]

A day after they left the city, they made their first camp at the edge of a copse. Kylo was checking over his armour while Poe and Hux were sat on a log opposite him, Poe cooking a fowl on the fire and Hux watching him do it. Kylo had let himself fall into a somewhat meditative state as he worked everything over, but a glint of silver and amber across camp hooked him out of it.

Hux had withdrawn a small pouch from his pocket, and withdrawn from that again a brooch. Another second let Kylo confirm – it was the very brooch from the city market. How had he known? Then he was handing it to Poe with a smooth, “I saw this and thought of you.” Bastard.

Poe was speechless for a second. “You shouldn't have,” were the first words out of his mouth.

“Well I can always-”

“No, I'll...” Poe reached to take it from Hux's hand. Kylo's jaw clenched as Poe's fingers lingered for too long. “Thanks, Hux. This is... wow.” He put it on, pinning it over his heart.

“It isn't straight.” Without waiting to be asked, Hux reached up with deft mage's fingers to fix it, smoothing out the fabric more than was necessary. “There.”

The leather armour in Kylo's grip creaked. Poe didn't hear it, but Hux shot him a look and... was that a smirk?

Then it hit Kylo; those flowers he'd given to Poe weeks ago must have made Hux jealous. It did not enter into Kylo's conception that Hux could simply like seeing Poe happy – happiness could be a part of it, certainly, but Hux was too cunning, too driven by ulterior motives for it to be that simple – or that Hux's feeling at seeing Poe like another person's gift could be any different to what Kylo himself was now feeling at seeing the same.

Well, if this was to be a game of one-upmanship, Kylo was sure he'd find a way to win. To make Poe smile like that, run a hand through his curls self-consciously as he now was – Kylo could do that just as well as Hux could. The rest of the evening, his mind was spinning with things he could give to the bard, trinkets of affection he could source the next time they crossed a place which dealt in such things.

The fire burned down and Hux retreated into his tent for the evening, Poe and Kylo settling on their bedrolls. They ended up facing each other, so Kylo, with his Witcher eyes, was not spared the view of Poe's finger fiddling with the brooch as he smiled to himself.

“He shouldn't have got it for me,” Poe mumbled again, as if sensing Kylo's train of thought, “It's probably gonna get broken.” Then, quieter, “I worry enough about whether you two will stay in one piece, I'd rather not worry about tiny things like this as well.”

Kylo thought about that for a minute. “You worry about us?” He couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice. Out of all of them, Poe was the one who should be being worried about – Kylo himself was nigh on destructible, and Hux would probably survive anything out of sheer spite, even discounting his magic.

“Shut up,” Poe chuckled.

Kylo watched him smile up blankly at the canopy. And... if Poe could be happy like that without being showered with gifts, if it would please him more to worry about them less, maybe Kylo didn't need to compete with Hux. Perhaps the three of them were good enough as they were.

[babysizedfics]

Little Accidents, Big Developments

Bonus chapter: Yellow

[This is an age regression story]

Chapter Summary: Janus detects a lie.

Chapter word count: 1,800

Other chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / bonus

Read on AO3 or below the cut!

Content warnings: light angst, very mild blood via a bitten lip, and brief, hypothetical mentions of disembowelment and decapitation (Remus, amirite?)

oOo

Janus sipped at his chamomile tea, only faintly registering the bright yellow haze that overcame the left side of his vision. Another lie.

His vision would flare several times a day at least, always informing him of an untruth spoken by one of the sides. He was, of course, accustomed to this alert, having lived with this power for the entirety of his existence.

As the hot herbal drink soothed his aching throat (it was murder on the lungs to reprimand Remus so much), he indulged in his curiosity and closed his eyes. With a practised concentration, he mentally reached out for the false words that had sounded his silent alarm.

It was Patton’s voice. The version of Patton’s voice that Janus had deemed “daddy dialect” in the recent weeks. ‘Nothing will change, sweetheart.’

Janus scoffed.

The lies he was so accustomed to hearing spanned the breadth of significance, from inconsequential white lies (‘I don’t know who finished your Crofter’s jam, Logan.’) to really outrageous fabrications.

Within the past two months, he had heard quite the abundance of silly fibs. Even in the space of a fortnight, some truly ridiculous ones had stuck in his mind:

‘I don’t need dinner!’

‘I-I’m older now. I can do this on my own.’

‘It was a purely tactical approach.’

‘Three, two, one, blow! … You did it!’

It seemed almost every lie spoken by the self-proclaimed “Light Sides” nowadays was riddled with either petulance or condescension. (That is, Janus thought with a roll of his mismatched eyes, at least notably more than was usual for them.) The reason behind it was not lost on him. He may not have been the designated logical side, but it would take an absolute dunce to miss the cues on what exactly was happening in the others’ household; Logan and Patton had evidently taken on caregiving roles for Virgil and, unexpectedly - though perhaps it should not have been, given his childishness - Roman.

Janus had had his suspicions of such after walking in on the household spending time together a month previously. Given how fiercely protective Logan had been of the others and the way Patton had hidden the two younger sides behind himself, it would be hard to ignore the shift in their dynamic. Though the confirmation of it through listening in to the others’ unwitting lies had come as quite an unpleasant shock to Janus, nonetheless.

Every day he sensed silly fibs. The one earlier about baby giggles being a legal requirement under baby law had been… not endearing, per se (that yellow pulse again), but perhaps interesting. Though none of the nonsense he had been alerted to in the past few weeks came close to the idiocy of ‘Nothing will change, sweetheart.’

How self-assured. How naïve. How reminiscent of Janus’ own foolish thoughts all those years ago.

He sighed, lowering his mug to the table and running his cold fingertips idly over the burning hot ceramic. It was not that Janus was jealous (he ignored the faint swell of yellow in the corner of his vision) but rather that he felt an uncomfortable bubble of remorse in his chest, growing and stretching and forcing its way against his ribs.

As he had done countless times before, he wondered what things would have been like had he behaved differently when the youngest side was still part of his household. Had he been more understanding of Virgil’s behaviours. More accepting.

Well, as Patton’s lie had brought up such aching memories, Janus decided a tad more bittersweet self-indulgence would be fitting for the night.

He rose from his seat, tucked the chair back under the table, and slinked through the house fluidly. He thanked his serpentine side for allowing him to practically float up the stairs and through the hallway without making a sound. If either of the other two residents heard him and decided to leave their rooms for a chat, Janus would not be held responsible for whatever unsavoury greeting he may bestow upon them.

A vile feeling clawed at his throat as he neared the perpetually closed door of Virgil’s old bedroom.

With a sharp, short sigh that might have been at least partly a hiss, Janus pushed the heavy door open. The neglected hinges creaked.

Beams of cold light from the hall flooded through the gap of the opening doorway, making visible a thin segment of the abandoned room.

It was unmarred by dirt, slime, blood, or any other disgusting substance, thankfully. Janus had to give credit to Remus. As non-existent as that side’s impulse control was, he had managed to spare this single room from his various antics and pranks at Janus’ sincere request.

The room was entirely unchanged from how it had been left years ago. Small, dotted stains on the walls showed where blu-tac used to hold up punk band posters. Splotches of black on the carpet by the old dresser showed where liquid eyeliner was spilt too many times. Black cotton bedsheets (which now appeared grey with their faint layer of dust) were pulled taut over the mattress where they had only ever used to be in constant, rumpled disarray at a certain someone’s stubborn refusal to make the bed.

Janus gripped the doorframe tightly, clenching his jaw against his growing feeling of unease.

Being a “Dark Side” came with an appreciation of all things, well, dark. True crime stories were common conversation material at dinner, movie nights featured more than anyone’s fair share of fake blood (not always on screen, mind you; Remus had to have some fun once in a while, after all), and family bonding time consisted of debates on the darkest secrets of society and an abundance of teasing of each others’ insecurities and fears - all in good fun, of course. (Though, when Virgil had finally left for good that fateful day with tears streaming down his cheeks, Janus had been forced to reconsider what “good fun” really meant to them.)

As it was, Janus was accustomed to seeing and hearing things meant to turn stomachs, race hearts, and scramble minds. He shrugged at the majority of them and scoffed at the rest. But gazing upon this empty room - the physical embodiment of his failure as a parental figure - was the closest he thought he could truly be to feeling horrified.

Janus’ insides twisted and pulled so much every time his eyes wandered over the sealed doorway, that he had seriously considered asking that Remus follow through on his threats to disembowel him and relieve him of his agony.

Bile had not yet risen in his throat, so Janus considered today to be a good one to bring himself to peek at the old bedside table - or rather what lay upon it.

Once cluttered with makeup products, tangled headphones, and herbal anxiety remedies, the surface now lay mostly bare. Save for a single soft toy slumped across it limply.

The blue stuffed rabbit was a ghastly thing. It was missing an eye, one of its limbs was stretched far longer than the others (probably as a result of its owner’s nervous tugging which was otherwise directed onto his hoodie sleeves), and one of its ears was half-chewed to tatters (another nervous habit of its owner, no doubt). Despite its ratty appearance, the thing was harmless. Such an unassuming object, so innocent.

And yet it brought tears to Janus’ eyes.

He had never even learned the name of the damned thing and wasn’t it utterly ridiculous that Janus, the unofficial leader of the “Dark Sides”, was blubbering over a made-up name for an inanimate object?

It had not mattered to him before. It had made no difference to him what Virgil had named it or how much he had cared about it. Janus had metaphorically and mercilessly turned the thing into a weapon that day. With his careless tongue, he had twisted its existence from an item of comfort and attachment into a source of ridicule and hurt. It was no wonder Virgil had left it behind. It had been tainted.

Janus winced at a sudden sting in his lower lip. He had bitten into it again. One would have thought having fangs would convince someone to be more careful of such a habit. 

Delicately dabbing at a drop of cool blood at the corner of his mouth, Janus sighed shakily. That was quite enough emotional torment for one evening.

He released the old bedroom door and let it fall shut. It had barely thudded against the doorframe when that grating, obnoxious sound trilled from the bane of Janus’ existence.

‘What’s up, Jannothy?’

‘Remus,’ Janus greeted with an exaggerated eye roll. It was only partly to rid his eyes of their wetness. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’ Yellow tinted his left eye.

The distinctive scent of burnt paper met his nose. With a jolt of dread, Janus turned to see Remus half-caked in soot. He just about managed to contain a scream. It would have only invited one of Remus’ much-loved screeching competitions.

‘I see you’ve been in the library,’ Janus sighed. ‘Tell me, just how many of my books were charred beyond repair this time?’

Remus blew his cheeks out in a massive exhale, looking up to the ceiling in thought. As the warm breath wafted over his face, Janus was careful to breathe through his mouth.

‘Oh, only about half of them,’ Remus sang then cackled joyously for a short while. ‘But you’ll be glad to hear I sculpted the ashes into the shape of a nine-foot-long decapitated aardvark!’

Janus shut his eyes, shaking his head lightly. He hadn’t the energy to pander to Remus’ whims of fancy. ‘Good night, Remus.’

He silently slipped past the other side in the direction of his room.

‘But it’s only seven!’

‘I’m half cat.’ Yellow again.

‘Jan - wait,’ Remus called behind him, and the incongruous hesitance in his voice gave Janus pause.

He twisted his body back, surprised by the incredibly rare sincerity in the furrow of Remus’ brow.

‘All right. You have my undivided attention,’ Janus drawled, making a point to hold up his hand and inspect his nails thoroughly. He smirked at the yellow tint of his vision.

‘You seem bummed out,’ Remus whined, ‘and the role for resident bum is filled out by me already.’

Janus rolled his eyes again. At this rate, he would get vertigo.

‘So, are you, y’know… okay?’ Remus asked quietly. (Really, what an oxymoron that was.)

Something hard and hot clogged Janus’ throat and he swallowed thickly around it. He dropped his hand and swiftly looked up to meet Remus’ eyes.

‘Yes,’ Janus said in an entirely even tone, ‘I am perfectly fine. Now, if you will excuse me.’

He spun away and marched down the narrow hallway, keeping his gait steady. It was quite a feat, considering the fact he was half-blinded by a bright yellow glare.

oOo

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@tearful-babi

[junquisite]

Into the Mirror

WORD COUNT : 3.8K

GENRE : Supernatural of sort.

WARNING : Implied death but not explicitly stated. Open to interpretation, Open Ending

NOTE : Please enjoy whatever this is. It’s a lot and confusing but i tried to be as clear as i can be before messing the feeling of the story. If there is anything confusing, Please tell me. I’m sorry if the ending feels rushed though.

“Daeun-ah?” she stopped when she heard her name to see the landlady waving at her.

“This package was delivered for you today. They dropped it here with me. Take it, it's quite big.” she said and a confused Daeun walked to her apartment and saw a huge pack. It was almost equal to her own height ,if not bigger, she thought as she tried to pick it. It wasn't heavy per se but she still struggled to bow to the lady after picking it up, already dreading the two floor stairs flight she’ll have to climb with it. Mentally she cursed the out of order elevator and finally thanked the gods for letting her live after bringing it up and to her apartment.

She unlocked the door to her apartment and dragged it in, checking the details and seeing no information of the sender was there, she opened it to find a full body size mirror covered with styrofoam and she just stared at it.

Who could have sent it?

She opened her phone to see through her contacts to see any person who might have sent it but she concluded at none. She hadn't talked to her parents in 2 years since they did the whole “disown the kid because she wont do the thing they want her to do'' so now she was working at her own flower shop. It wasn't much but it was keeping her happy even if most of the nights she would come home exhausted and would have to wake up before dawn to go to the flower market.

There were no friends of hers she knew in the business school who were close enough for them to send her a gift and that too a mirror. It made no sense.

 For the next three days the mirror stayed near her apartment’s entryway, covered in styrofoam and she would just pass it a glance whenever she'd go out or come home.

Finally on Sunday when she chose to close the shop early, she came home and just stared at it for a couple of minutes. And then finally pulled away the styrofoam.

She had to accept, it was a pretty mirror. Simple But beautiful. It had a golden stand and golden border with beautiful design adoring the corners. She pulled it and placed it beside her vanity in her room, and startled herself the next morning when she woke up, flung her legs off the bed and saw her own reflection staring back.

“I’ll have to move this somewhere.” she mumbled as she glared at it, her own bed hair mocking her and she groaned. It was too early in the morning for this.

Eventually she got used to it though. It was not like her small apartment provided her with any other option to place the mirror at.

One morning a few days later she woke up, habitual now to look at the mirror, she felt as if she saw a different room and a man inside the mirror. She rubbed her eyes and watched again to see herself staring and blinked. Must be her sleepy mind, she thought as she got up to freshen up and dress up.

The day went by and nothing significant happened so she went back, tired but satisfied and clumsily wobbling through her apartment, she ate a cup noodle and deemed it enough to sleep after. She went to her bedroom, stripping down to her underwear to wear her pyjamas when she heard a loud “Shit I did not know you were changing!” and turned around to see a leaving silhouette from the mirror which showed a room definitely not hers.

She almost screamed, but chose to scramble for her clothings and quickly wear the pyjamas, went to stare at the mirror which was now showing her own room. She tried to look at it sideways only to see her own reflection and pulled away.

“Am i hallucinating?” she whispered to herself, giving a last look to the mirror as she went to her bed.

“Have i finally lost it?” she whispered again and turned away from the mirror to have a fitful night of sleep.

 The Next day Daeun woke up with an expected headache and cursed whatever she saw in the mirror to not let her sleep in peace. That day she was slightly out of everything at work - her regulars asking her if she was okay and she tried her best to assure them she was, worried that confiding in someone about what she saw would definitely have her certified as a crazy person.

She tried to delay as much as she could to go back to her apartment that night but finally when the clock striked 11pm for the night, she trudged slowly to her home, choosing to eat at the nearby convenience store and finally she stood outside her apartment.

Taking a deep breath, she unlocked the door, the silence welcoming. She sighed and cursed herself for being scared for nothing and after freshening up, went to her room. She turned the lights on, not expecting a man to be getting up from the floor but on the inside of the mirror who said, “oh you’re late today!”

Sadly that was all she remembered as she saw the corners of her vision blurring and blackening, losing her footing as a yelp died down on her tongue.

A while later, she got up, groaning as she looked at the clock above her vanity, it was slightly past 1 in the morning and she rubbed her head softly, feeling the bump she probably gained when she fell and whined. Things were not supposed to go like this.

“Oh you're up! Please don't faint again, i really can't get out of here on my own and you have no clue how anxiety inducing this past hour has been for me.” she heard and she turned her neck to see a man inside the mirror, carefully looking at her, his hands up in a way to let her know that he was harmless and the room behind him was definitely not hers and she didn't knew him and she could feel her breath quickening as she scrambled back on the floor, a whimper escaping her lips when her back touched her bed.

“Please I won't hurt you.” the man pleaded again and she shook her head.

“All serial killers say that.” she whispered, eyes quickly looking for something to grab to hit him with.

“Serial killers are also not usually stuck inside a mirror so.” he said as he placed his hand on the mirror on his side, his open palm in her vision and something akin to peace engulfed her.

Could he really not come here?

“Am i hallucinating?” she asked and he snorted, his eye roll very clear to her and she felt her blood rushing to her cheeks. This was embarrassing.

“No you’re not.”

“And you’re real?” she asked again and saw him nod hesitantly.

“At Least i think I am?”

She sat up now, a bit more comfortably, “And you can't get out of there?” she asked again and he nodded.

“I need someone to come inside and take me out. I can't come out on my own.” at his words her eyes widened and she took a step closer to the mirror.

“I can come inside?” and he nodded again, stepping back on the inside as if to give her way.

“Do you want to try?” he asked.

She knew it was a bad idea.  What of this was all a plot to get her inside and what if she gets stuck, but maybe it was his downturned eyes or his warm smile that tempted her to believe him.

“What's..your name?” she asked as she took a couple more steps towards the mirror, standing in front of it now, looking at him on the other side. 

“Donghun. Lee Donghun.” he said as he beckoned at her to come in. she touched the surface of the mirror - the usual cold tough material suddenly felt like soft silk at her fingertips and she gasped.

“What's your name?” Donghun asked and she looked at him intently staring at her point of contact with the mirror.

“Kim Daeun.” she said as she tried to push her hand through the mirror, which went past the barrier easily, and she felt warmth surround her hand on the other side of the mirror.

“Step in..” she heard him whisper and nod, hypnotically almost, following his voice in as she stepped inside.

A sudden warmth surrounded her as she looked around at the small room - the warmth wasn't uncomfortable but it was still warmer than her own heated apartment. 

“The room looks nice.” she said as she looked around the closed off room with one door and no window. It had a bookshelf full of books, a lamp on a table beside it which had a few diaries and notebooks on it. There was a bed on the wall against the bookshelf with a small table beside it which had another lamp. There was also a light overhead on the wall as she looked up.

“What's through the door?” she asked and saw him smirking.

“Why don't you find out for yourself?” he asked as she, deciding to trust him, walked up to the door and pulled at it. When it didn't budge, she pulled again, this time with more pressure but it won't budge.

“It..wont open?” she said and Donghun smiled at her but it didn't reach his eyes. He was stuck here.

“It has never opened since I have opened my eyes here. My only source of knowing day and night is through the mirror.” he said as he pointed at the mirror.

Suddenly though, Daeun felt dizzy and grabbed the corner of the table as Donghun came to stand in front of her.

“Are you alright?” 

She tried to nod but the lights started flickering creepily and two books fell down from the bookshelf.

“What’s going on?” she asked, panic clear in her voice.

“I think you should leave. I dont think this place wants you here.” Donghun said, frantically pulling her towards the mirror as she stumbled on her feet as he pushed her away. A few seconds later she was in her own room, looking at her own reflection from the mirror, no sign of Donghun left except for the slight red marks around her wrist from where he had grabbed her and pushed her away.

 The next morning she woke up with a heavy head thanks to the mere 2 hours of sleep she managed to have and again no sign of Donghun. She even tried knocking at the mirror in hopes of seeing him but no sign.

The day trudged at a snail’s space as if mocking her frenzy to go back home. For the first time since she had opened her shop, she rushed back home as soon as she closed her shop, deciding to clean the next day in the morning.

She opened her apartment in a  hurry, kicking off her boots and throwing off the coat at the couch, eyes falling on the red marks still on his wrist - her sole reminder that yesterday in fact, actually happened.

She rushed to her room, turning on the lights and felt a huge surge of relief flooding her system when Donghun smiled at her, albeit surprised as he stood up from the floor on his side of the mirror.

“You’re earlier than usual today.” he said as he closed the book and she saw him going out of the frame of the mirror and coming back empty handed.

“I wanted to make sure you were alright.” she said as she felt her anxiety of the day pass as she slumped down on the bed.

“Why won't I be?” he said, a small smirk still present on his face as he tucked his blond hair behind his ear and she looked away, praying to the gods above that her face won't flush red and failing miserably at that.

“I don't know. You didn't show up after that nor this morning so i was just worried.” she said, looking at the floor instead of at him, adamant to avoid his gaze. 

His laugh made her look up at him.

“You’re cute.” 

~

After that, her daily schedule got tweaked a bit - now she started closing her shop half an hour early, cleaning and going back home to Donghun, the man in her mirror who had her absolutely enchanted.

“What do you mean you’ve never eaten anything?” she said as she took off her scarf and threw it on the bed, picking a pair of clothes to change in the bathroom. She hadn't tried going back in since then but he had come out for a while, going back in after a few minutes to 2 hours till now.

“I've never felt it, that's all i'm saying.” she heard him say and chuckled as she stepped out in her work clothes only and he raised an eyebrow at her.

“I was thinking..” she trailed off. “What do you think will happen if you stay longer than 2 hours outside of the mirror?” 

Donghun looked to be thinking. “I dont know?” and she nodded.

“You want to go see my shop?”

Half an hour later, Donghun was wrapped in an old men’s coat she had found that morning that brought this whole idea into her mind. She was giddy - her shop was her baby and she had built it over the past two years with everything she has got. And Donghun was one of the few people she was nervous about showing it to.

They entered the shop and the fascination on Donghun’s face and how it lit up made all her nerves leave. He was happy at the one place that keeps her going.

When they were coming back, after she gave him the small flower crown she had made for him, which he happily kept on his head, they were on their way back to her home when his stomach grumbled and they stopped dead in their tracks.

“I thought you have never felt hunger.” she whispered and looked at him looking at her wide eyed.

“So did i.”

They ended up at the convenience store near her apartment. And she ended up indulging all of his demands and they came home with two bags full of convenience store snacks. They munched on them, lost in conversation as Donghun told him how different the world was when he almost stepped out, somewhere around the 90s Daeun assumed from his description.

“Where was the mirror before?” she asked and he hummed.

“Somewhere near the water? Ocean? I think it was jeju?” he said and she hummed.

“I used to be able to be out and about for way longer than now. Almost a day and it used to be so much fun.” he added wistfully and she smiled at it.

“So why can't you be out longer now?” he shrugged.

“Also why was the mirror sent here?” she asked the question that has been occupying her thoughts for a while.

“I am not sure. One day I just could not see out of the mirror and when I could, it was your room.”

Due to the ongoing discussion, they didn't realise how much time had passed until Donghun gasped. He looked at the clock and got up suddenly and Daeun followed as he tried to go back.

“Donghun? What’s wrong?  Daeun asking, grabbing his wrist and then she saw it.  

The bracelet she had noticed him always wearing, it was burning his skin. The black braided bracelet was turning his skin red with every passing second until he pulled his hand loose and went back into the mirror and she was left alone in her room.

That night a lot of thoughts kept her awake. Wandering from why she was the one who received the mirror to how he was quite literally burning when he overstayed in her world. Whatever was going on in her mind, she slept with the vague fear of never being able to be long enough with him.

 She was a kid - about 8 years old? When she remembered going to Jeju island with her family. There was an antique shop on the beach with a lot of cheap trinkets and it was almost always occupied with tourists as she noticed whenever she would go to the beach. On the last day, her mother wanted to buy some souvenirs from there so they went in. Her mother and father were busy discussing gifts when she wandered off to the back of the store which only had really dull items for a 8 year old, a huge golden mirror caught her eyes. It was the shiniest item in the whole shop and she happily sat in front of it, staring at her reflection when something flickered in it.

There was a vague flicker of an image of a man with sad eyes who smiled down at her.

“Hi little one.”

 She woke up with cold sweat. She tried to convince herself it was a dream and forced herself to freshen up. By the time she was ready to go out, she was sure that it was in fact not a dream and was now sure that that was the place where Dongun was before. Now the question was, does he remember her?

 That night when she got back home, Donghun was waiting for her with a smile and she was weak. So she did not bring up that she had seen him before. But she did tell him that she found this antique shop down at Jeju which was on the beach and likely to be the place he was at earlier. When she showed him the pictures, she saw a flicker of recognition come on his face and then a huge smile took over.

“Yes that is it!”

So that night ended with their potential plans to fly to Jeju and find some information. He asked her to come inside the room again and for the first time, nothing happened - no dizziness, no discomfort, only the peace Donghun had started to bring in her life. She woke up in that room with his arms around her and it was blissful. She went back to her own room and spent the whole day with a kiddish smile and closed up earlier than usual to rush home. 

She stilled as soon as she entered her apartment though when she smelled food. Donghun was supposed to be stuck and she just got home so it made no sense. But as she moved in further, a sight that took her breath away greeted her - Donghun with a “kiss the cook” apron around his waist was tasting something and then he turned around and she almost cried.

“You’re out..” she whispered as she took a couple steps towards him and he gave her a huge smile. “I tried it today and it somehow worked! If this goes on, I think I'll be able to stay longer too outside!” he said gleefully but Daeun was overcome with emotions as she went and hugged him suddenly.

She hadn't realised how much that man had come to mean to her and she could not stop the sob that came over.

“Hey hey! What's wrong?” 

“Nothing!” she said as she hiccuped and buried her face in his shoulder and felt him combing his hands through her hair as he cooed at her.

“I'm just very happy to see you!” 

He pulled back to smile at her and that was the moment she realized how close her face was to his and how much she wanted to kiss those lips. As if he had read her mind, he leaned down softly, only to stop and stare at her eyes until she nodded and tugged at his shirt.

That night was everything and nothing like she could have imagined and in the morning she woke up, sore and giggling with the kisses he was pressing on her face. She got ready to go to her shop with him clinging to her back with pressing kisses to the marks he left behind last night and she had to use all of her will power to actually move away.

 A few days later, Donghun asked her if they could go on a trip to Jeju and an excited Daeun purchased tickets online and pulled out a lot of cash from her account on her way home. She entered her house to see donghun cooking again and went to give him a peck. “I've booked the tickets, let’s go shopping tomorrow before going to Jeju!” she told him excitedly.

That night Donghun insisted on sleeping inside saying he was feeling exhausted and Daeun insisted on joining him, since she hadn’t experienced any discomfort since the first time.

The next morning she woke up to a really bad headache and a cold bed. As she looked around and found Donghun missing, she got up and pulled on a donghun’s shirt from the floor as she trudged to the mirror. She found it weird how unlike the usual scene of her own room, this time around the mirror showed nothing but an endless baclk hole. That should have been her first sign. But she missed it.

Ignoring it, she tried to go through it to her own room but the mirror was equal to a wall. She felt a cold shiver run down her spine.

“Donghun?” she called out but received no response.

She tried to go through the mirror again and then she noticed it. The balck braided bracelet on her own wrist.

~

One month later

~

The public are at an uprising against the police since today marks one month of the mysterious disappearance of Kim Daeun. The police are still adamant on ruling it as a robbery gone wrong on the basis of the cash gone missing that she had apparently taken out the day before and the broken mirror in her room as a potential sign of struggle. The lack of any ransom call had ruled out the possibility of a kidnapping and there's a very low chance that she’s still alive. Although the police stays adamant that they can still save her since no body had been found.

 The man scoffed behind his mask as he waited at the pickup station of the cafe as the barista prepared his order.

“Lee Donghun-ssi?” the barista asked and he stepped forward and thanked the barista as he took his coffee and exited the cafe.

[bugaboosandbees]

Justice Over All Part 1

Okay. Here is the Ladybug-episode-divergence Princess Justice fic that I promised!

I’m still a bit sick, but I wanted to get something out before the end of the weekend. I eventually decided to just split this monster into parts. It should be two or three parts long, depending on what people want to see. 

As per usual, if you’d like to be tagged, shoot me a note/message/ask! 

Thank you all for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

Marinette

“Princess Justice, I am Scarlet Moth.”

No, no, no, NO! This couldn’t be happening. She could feel him seeping into her mind like a puddle of oil, turning her already turbulent emotions up to 11 until she wanted to scream and cry and shout and punch something all at the same time. 

“--nette! Marinette!”

She dimly realized that she’d sunk to her knees, hands were clamped tightly over her ears. She felt a light pressure on her shoulders and forced her eyes open, trying her best to shove Hawkmoth’s voice to the back of her mind. Adrien. Because of course it was him kneeling before her, hands on her shoulders and emerald eyes looking so concerned.

“Marinette, don’t listen to him! You can fight it. You’re the strongest person that I know. Please, Marinette!” He looked close to tears.

She tried her best to focus on him, to calm down, assure herself that there was some way to fix this -- to prove that she hadn’t… And then she saw Lila over his shoulder, smirking victoriously and the rage and sadness broke through the walls she’d tried to build in her mind. Not yet -- she frantically scrambled to get her earrings off -- she couldn’t let them --

She pressed them into Adrien’s hand and shoved him away from her as the darkness overtook her vision.

“Yes, Scarlet Moth.”

Adrien

No! Adrien pressed himself up against the lockers behind him as the bubbling red cloud swept over Marinette’s hunched form. When it cleared, his friend was gone -- in her place stood an imposing lady in red. Her pigtails had grown longer and darker and moved through the air like pools of negative space. She was blindfolded with fabric as red as blood and held a wickedly sharp sword in one hand and a set of scales in the other. Her head tilted in his direction and something that almost passed for a smile twisted her lips.

“Thank you for trying Adrien, but I am Princess Justice now, and I will have my vengeance.” The armored heels of her boots clicked across the locker room floor as she followed the other akumas out, no doubt starting to hunt for Lila who had slipped out of the room sometime after she had succumbed to Hawkmoth’s control.

For a second he couldn’t move, couldn’t think. He was going to have to fight Marinette. He wasn’t sure if he could -- and there was another army of akumas and how was he --

“Adrien!”

He sharply shook his head and looked forward. Chloe and Alya were looking at him with concern.

“Come on,” Chloe said. “We should get to my hotel. Ladybug will be looking for me and it will be safer for you guys there too. Sabrina ran ahead to tell Daddy what’s going on so he won’t be stupid and get akumatized again like last time.”

“I… err…” He couldn’t go with her -- his Lady would need him. His Princess already needed him. “I should get home. Father worries if I’m not safe during attacks and I don’t have my phone, so I can’t tell him I’ll be somewhere else.” Did that sound good enough?

Chloe looked at him doubtfully, but before she could speak again, Alya cut in.

“Right before she was akumatized, Marinette gave you something. Why would she do that?”

Adrien suddenly took notice of his right hand, still wrapped into a fist around something that was pressing uncomfortably into his palm. He loosened his fingers to reveal a pair of very familiar earrings, and his heart stopped.

A bright light emanated from the earrings in his palm and all three teens covered their eyes. When it dimmed, Tikki was floating in the air above his palm, looking absolutely distraught. She immediately flew towards him and hugged his neck as best as she could with her small arms, without seeming to notice the two other girls in the room, eyes blown wide as the recognized what was obviously a Ladybug-themed kwami that had appeared out of Marinette’s earrings.  

Their shock was only exacerbated when a dark shape flew out of Adrien’s jacket towards Tikki as if yanked by a magnet, wrapping small arms around her and starting to purr.

Adrien closed his eyes, counted to ten, and opened them again, staring determinedly at Chloe and Alya, both of whom he had never actually seen at a loss for words. If the situation had been less grim, it might have been funny.

“You can’t tell anyone,” he said with all the seriousness he could muster even as he raised a hand to comfort the two kwamis curled up in the crook of his neck. He couldn’t process right now. He’d think about everything that had occurred in the last two minutes later, but if he tried to think about it now, he’d shut down and he couldn’t do that. He looked down at Plagg wrapping himself around Tikki as if physically trying to hold her together.

“Plagg?” he questioned softly. His normally caustic kwami looked at him with sad green eyes that already knew what he was going to say. “I think we need to find the Guardian.”

Alya

Marinette was Ladybug. Ever since a kwami -- Ladybug’s kwami -- had materialized out of her best friend’s earrings, Alya felt as though her world had been turned on its head. Everything suddenly made absolutely no sense, and yet more sense than it ever had before. Of course, Ladybug wouldn’t choose someone she hardly knew to wield a miraculous. That would be too unpredictable a situation and Ladybug, above all else, was a strategist. It explained how Marinette had been able to get her an interview with Ladybug, and how she always seemed to disappear when an akuma attacked. It explained -- no.

“Lila’s a liar! I saw Ladybug call her out!”

“A good journalist always checks her sources.”

“It was Lila! Lila framed me!”

“Don’t jump to conclusions.”

Alya saw red. She dug her nails into her palms, focusing on the dull pain as she counted backward from ten. No. She had already failed Marinette -- her best friend, her hero -- once. She wouldn’t fail her again by getting akumatized. She looked up at Adrien. He looked just as shaken as she felt.

“You two need to hide,” he eventually said. “I need to go and find the Guardian -- tell him what happened and -- I don’t know. Hopefully, he’ll know what to do.”

Alya bristled at the thought of being sidelined when her best friend was hurt and when it was partially her fault -- but before she could speak, Chloe scoffed and cut in.

“Please, Adrikins. There’s an actual army of akumas loose in the city. You’re going to need all the backup you can get to even reach the guardian. I’m coming with you, and I guess Cesiare can too.” Alya saw a strange, determined glint in the blonde’s eyes. Huh. Perhaps being Queen Bee had been good for her.

“But --”

“No.” This time it was Alya’s turn. “Even if it’s supposed to be a secret, it doesn’t matter at this point. If we don’t fix this, Hawkmoth wins. You need all the help you can get.”

Adrien glanced down at the Plagg and received a hesitant nod. He took a deep breath. “Alright, let’s go.”

Chloe

Dupain-Cheng was Ladybug. Scarlet Moth was back, he’d unleashed another army of akumas, and Ladybug was one of them. Hell if Chloe knew how to unpack all of that at the moment. Fortunately, growing up as the daughter of Audrey Bourgeois had taught her to compartmentalize. That was good. It looked like Adrien -- Chat Noir -- and Cesiare were having trouble right now.  She could have an existential crisis about bullying the idol that had trusted her with superpowers later.

“Alright. Now, where is this Guardian? We need to come up with a plan to get to wherever he is without getting hit or captured by any akumas. We don’t know exactly who has been akumatized yet, but we should probably assume that everyone we don’t run into in person is an active akuma. We’ll have to get there as civilians, but that could work to our advantage -- we’ll be less of a target.” The steadiness in her voice surprised her. It appeared to surprise Adrien and Cesaire as well. Cesaire looked a bit sour that Chloe had said something before she had, but Adrien appeared happy that someone else was willing to take charge.

Adrien softly grabbed Tikki and Plagg and deposited them in his hair, mussing it around them to hide them. “I don’t know where the guardian is, so you’re going to have to guide us.”

“Alright, kid.” She heard Plagg say. “Let’s go.”

The three teens moved cautiously toward the locker room door. Just before they reached it, it slammed open from the outside. Chloe quickly positioned herself in front of Adrien, noting with pleasure that Cesaire had done the same. It appeared that the Ladyblogger wasn’t totally incompetent. Admittedly, she wasn’t sure what they could do against and akuma, but they could at least hopefully provide enough of a distraction that Adrien could get away.

“Dudes! Zombizou, Princess Fragrance, and Reflecta bused into the classroom and everyone got akumatized?! What happened?” The newcomer looked around. “Where’s Lila? And Marinette?”

The tension drained from her form -- it was just Lahiffe.

Cesaire relaxed out of her own fighting stance and gave her boyfriend a long look. “A lot happened. We’ll fill you in on the way.”

The “way” turned out to be a winding path through at least two arrondissements, ending at a movie theatre of all places. They’d stuck to small alleys as much as possible, moving as quietly as possible to avoid the scarlet akumas they occasionally saw nearby and overhead. Chloe wasn’t the only one who had let out a quiet curse when the group had seen Dark Cupid flying above them. She remembered how Dark Cupid had almost caused Hawkmoth’s victory on Heroes’ Day. Even if they made it to the Guardian, they’d have to be careful.

It came as no surprise that the movie theatre that the kwamis had led them to was deserted. In unspoken agreement, the group moved as far from the glass front doors as possible once inside. They couldn’t chance a passing akuma seeing them.

“Master? Master?” Adrien whisper-hissed as loudly as he dared into the empty lobby. When a familiar Hawaiian shirt moved out from behind the central kiosk, he nearly fainted from relief.

For her part, Chloe was less than impressed. The so-called “Guardian of the Miraculous” was four-foot-nothing, looked like a strong wind would blow him over, and had the most atrocious fashion sense she’d ever seen outside an akuma. This impression was not improved when the old man fixed Adrien with a disapproving glare.

“Adrien, you know well that the miraculous are supposed to be kept secret. What is the meaning of this?”

Chloe could see the way he deflated, all too similar to the way he did when scolded by his asshole-emotionally-manipulative father. Oh hell no, no on her watch.

“Excuse me, Monsieur Guardian,” She cut across the old man before he could continue to badger Adrien. “He didn’t exactly have much of a choice. Have you looked outside lately? Thanks to a more startling than usual display of complete incompetence by several adults and what I can only assume is another Heroes’ Day-esque scheme of Hawkmoth’s, Ladybug has been akuamtized. We were there when it happened, and with an entire army of akumas loose in the city, we sure as hell weren’t going to let Paris’ only hope walk here alone.” Her arms were crossed over her chest and she leveled her very best Audrey Bourgeois glare at the small man.

He blanched, and Chloe used the opportunity to edge a bit more protectively in front of Adrien.

“Ladybug? Akumatized?” His frown grew deeper, and Chloe’s anger spiked again.

“If you’re going to try to blame her for this, don’t even fucking bother. I’ve literally never seen anyone with a more valid reason to be akumatized. She was framed, discredited, and expelled from school in the span of about five minutes. In case it escaped your notice, she’s fucking fifteen. She’s allowed to have feelings.” She was aware of Adrien, as well as Cesaire and Lahiffe openly gaping at her back. She was a bit surprised at her vehement defense of Dupain-Cheng… Marinette, herself. She didn’t quite know how she felt about everything yet, but she figured that if the girl she’d bullied for years could trust her with literal superpowers on a repeat basis, she could defend her against a man that she could already tell had a severe holier-than-thou complex.

“Now,” she continued, “are you going to help us fix this mess, or are you going to continue blaming two people who’ve done nothing to cause it?”

Adrien

Ever since he’d seen Tikki emerge from Marinette’s earrings, he’d been in shock. His Lady was his Princess, and he’d failed both sides of her. She’d been akumatized because he’d been too naive to see that Lila’s lies were hurting the most important person in his life. He… he wasn’t sure that he could fight her. He hadn’t expected Chloe to step up and take charge so effectively, but he’d been more relieved than he’d like to admit that he could stand back, listen to Plagg’s quiet, reassuring murmurs in his ear, and try to forget that because of his own negligence he’d have to fight his Lady. Maybe it was cowardly, but he just couldn’t -- When Master Fu looked at him with such disapproval, he could feel his breath start to come faster and faster. Oh God, he’d failed. He was a terrible excuse for a Black Cat, and Master Fu was going to take his miraculous back --

The almost panic-attack was cut off by a sharp pressure on his arm. He looked down to see Plagg staring up at him with concern and shook himself out of whatever state he’d been in, just in time to hear Chloe’s impassioned defense of his Lady.

No sooner than she had finished speaking, Plagg cleared his throat, drawing attention to himself. “She’s right, you know. You may be the Guardian, but don’t forget that you never finished your formal training.” The Black Cat kwami spoke with an unusually cold and serious tone. “I shouldn’t need to remind you that you’re not infallible. I will not let another set of chosen be destroyed because you refused to believe that someone could know better than you. Bring my chosen the miracle box.”

Master Fu opened and closed his mouth several times, unsure of how to respond. He looked to a turtle kwami who had emerged to perch on his shoulder, but the kwami merely averted their eyes. Deflating, Master Fu turned around and pulled the box out from a compartment underneath the kiosk. As he opened it and presented it to Adrien, Plagg cut in once more.

“And, so help me, if anything happens to Tikki’s bug because of this…” He let the sentence hang, staring at Fu in a way that made Adrien want to step back.  

Master Fu paled but looked at Adrien. “Adrien Agreste,” his voice shook only slightly. “Your mission to protect Paris has never been more dire. You must choose allies that you can trust to fight beside you. After the battle is done, you must return the miraculous for safekeeping.”

He stared at the box laid out before him -- unimaginable power glinting up at him in the form of seemingly innocuous jewelry. Was this how Ladybug -- Marinette -- felt every time she had to find allies for them? He’d once envied her the Guardian’s secrets, but standing here before the box, he took it all back. What if he chose wrong? He didn’t know who any of the other heroes were besides Luka and Kagami and --

“I --” he paused, voice cracking. “I don’t know who the other heroes are, Master. What if I choose wrong --”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alya and Nino step up beside him, matching gentle smiles on their faces.

“Rena Rouge and Carapace reporting for duty.” They said together.

Adrien felt himself melt in relief. He gently lifted the fox miraculous out of the box and placed it in Alya’s hands. She fastened it around her neck as Master Fu handed the bracelet that had been around his wrist to Nino.

Adrien grabbed the Bee comb and looked back and Chloe, who was staring at her feet.

“I can’t.” She whispered.

Alya bristled. “After all this, you don’t want to help her?”

Chloe looked up to reveal eyes glistening with tears. “You all saw Dark Cupid out there! Hawkmoth knows that I’m Queen Bee. If I come, I’ll be more of a liability than a help.”

Adrien looked down at the comb in his hand. She was right, but then who --?

Master Fu cleared his throat. “If I may make a suggestion,” he said tentatively. “Miss. Bourgeois is correct that it is too risky for her to again become the Bee. However, if my memory serves me, there is another hero that can no longer wield her miraculous for the same reason. Judging by her earlier behavior, I believe that Miss. Bourgeois would be an excellent match for Longg, while the girl who was Ruukyo would suit Pollen quite well.”

Chloe looked shocked, but Adrien grinned widely, grabbing the Dragon choker and handing it to Chloe. As soon as her hands touched it, a brilliant light burst from it, and a dragonlike kwami -- Longg -- appeared. He stared at Chloe appraisingly for a moment and grinned approvingly.

“Yes,” he said, practically purring, “This one suits me quite nicely. A leader wise enough to know when it is practical to step back. I will enjoy guiding you to greatness, fledgling.”

Adrien turned back to the miraculous box as Chloe properly met her kwami while Alya and Nino got re-acquainted with theirs. He grabbed the Bee’s comb and the Snake’s bracelet from the box before closing it, a new wellspring of confidence running through him.

He had a team of people he trusted at his back. They would succeed. They had to.

Alya

Alya never thought she’d see the day that she’d feel reassured by the presence of Chloe Bourgeois, but in light of everything else that had happened in the past half an hour, she supposed it might be the least strange thing that had happened that day. She was impressed by how the other girl had handled the Guardian (boy if she hadn’t wanted to give him a piece of her mind as well) and she certainly didn’t expect Chloe to turn down being Queen Bee. When she heard the blonde’s reasoning, she was even more surprised.

While the Guardian suggested a bit of a miraculous swap, she leaned towards Nino, grabbing his hand gently to draw his attention away from Wayzz.

“Yeah, babe?”

She looked into his eyes. “We can’t make the same mistake that we made on Heroes’ Day, Nino. If one of us gets hit, the other needs to stay focused on the mission, okay?” For a moment, it looked like he was going to argue, but she cut him off. “Please, Nino. I -- I already messed up so bad. I need to know that even if I’m out of commission, you’ll protect her. Okay?”

The fight left him, and he sobered. “Alright Al. I promise.”

Grateful that she had secured his promise, she turned her attention back to the room. Chloe was quietly talking with a small red dragon kwami, and Adrien had the Bee comb and another miraculous she didn’t recognize in his hands.

“Alright,” he spoke. She was grateful that it looked like he’d gotten some of his confidence back. They’d all been pretty shaken to see Marinette akumatized, but she was his partner, and he’d taken it the worst of them all. “I need the three of you to find Marinette. Figure out where she is, and keep her distracted. I’m going to go get some more help.” He paused. “Be careful. She might not have her earrings right now, but she’s still Ladybug. She’s the best of all of us -- this won’t be easy.”

“You can count on us,” said Chloe. Alya and Nino nodded, and Adrien flashed them a grin.

“Plagg, claws out!” he was out the door of the movie theatre in a flash of green light.

Alya looked to her right at Nino and to her left at Chloe. An unspoken understanding passed between the three teens. “Let’s go,” she said.

“Wayzz, shell on!”

“Trixx, let’s pounce!”

“Longg, bring the storm!”

[nautiscarader]

So, we’ve went from one prompt per day to one per week, who’s surprised.

Prompt for ZekkKiray:  given that the prompts are still open, I would like to read your vision of a Sokka/Suki scene in Avatar  if Suki would've come into Sokka's tent when Zuko had left after he surprised him waiting for Suki and talked to him

I changed it slightly to make it canon, but the idea is still there.

(Ao3)

Staring mindlessly at the roof of the tent above him, Sokka wondered if he could have been less lucky. He thought that amidst all the chaos and constant travels, he would be able to spend some time with his girlfriend. But at the same time, Zuko's sudden visit brought so many painful memories, he found himself ashamed that in such dire times he dared to think about something as trivial as his relation with Suki, especially compared to what he should be focusing on.

Defeated, he let out a sigh, turned to his side, and then nearly shrieked when he saw Suki's face looking at him with her soft, beaming smile and big, loving eyes that seemed to shine even more upon his reaction.

- May I come in? - Su-Suki! - his voice cracked and he closed his arms on his chest as if he was caught naked - How-How long have you been here? - Just a minute or so - she giggled and leaned to fit underneath the tent, giving it a bit closer look. - Did... did you prepare that for me? - What? Oh, this...

Sokka looked at what at the time he thought was an appropriate decor for a romantic evening with his girlfriend, and what now looked so unbelievably tacky and overdone. The garlands of fire roses tied underneath the roof made him look brazen, and the multitude of candles he lit were, quite frankly a fire hazard, if they didn't travel with two water benders.

And yet, when Suki looked at the decorations Sokka made, words got stuck in her throat, and that gave him a chance to turn the cliché in his favour.

- Y-Yeah. I thought you're gonna like it.

Instead of replying, Suki knelt onto the mat, threw her arms around his neck and placed a soft kiss on his lips, making a searing flames burn through his veins, replacing the ice cold that the talk with Zuko has left him with. Their kiss deepened and soon he couldn't believe that for a moment he thought about putting his plans with Suki away.

- They look lovely - Suki whispered, once their lips parted. - Especially the roses. - Y-yeah. - Sokka stuttered - They go nicely with your red clothes.

Her smile suddenly vanished as she looked with disgust at the piece she was wearing.

- You do remember it's prison garb right? - Oh, no, no, I didn't mean... - Sokka began explaining - I just... I just thought that they are red, and the roses are red, so that-that means they go nicely together, right?

Suki smiled at her confused boyfriend, trying to salvage his thought.

- Well, you tell me, you are a skilled painter. - she giggled, moving closer to him - And what about my eyes? Do my clothes go with green?

it took Sokka a moment to read from her expression whether it was a trick question.

- Er... no?

Suki smiled.

- I was hoping you would say that.

For a quick moment Suki lost her boyfriend from her sight when she pulled the red attire over her head, and when she saw him again, it was difficult to say what was bigger: his wide-open jaw, or his eyes, desperately trying to simultaneously look away and ogle her breasts hidden behind a simple wrap, made from the same red material.

Suki reached her hands and tried calming him down by stroking his shoulders, though with her body inches away from his, she had managed a completely opposite reaction, judging from his behaviour. Only her sweet, delicate voice finally managed to gather his attention and bring him back to reality.

- Sokka...

She leaned forward, pressing her almost-naked chest against his blue robe. And as she straddled him, a third, missing sign of his excitement showed its presence when Suki's crotch brushed against his, reminding him that the cloth her panties were made from was equally thin.

- Su-Suki! I-I can explain! - You don't have to explain anything - Suki smiled - I understand...

She closed her arms behind his back and pressed her lips against his, once more joining herself with him, while their bodies, squirming and twitching under each other's presence, desperately demanded another point of connection. And when she felt his hands on her exposed back, she knew she won't have to do much more.

Though his hands were trembling, her fierce warrior meandered her back, wondering how far can he go. When his fingers slipped into her underwear, Sokka retracted them at once as if he got burned, only to find Suki's hand already on his, moving it back to where it was, to the source of the alluring warmth. Sokka opened his eyes, finding Suki's still closed, as she didn't want to break the spell they were under.

With some hesitation, Sokka explored her body, while their breaths mingled together, wary that he might do something wrong any second now. And yet, when he slipped his other hand underneath her wrappings, Suki only let out a deep, arousing moan that once more made him petrified, at least just for a moment, until his heart began pumping blood with doubled effort, in reaction to her sensual response. And when his right hand moved to cup her buttock, Suki down right broke their kiss, letting a primal cry that quickly brought his other hand to her ass as well.

Suki's hands were not idle either. Aside from helping Sokka find right place to caress, she was hastily undoing his clothes, and she quickly realised that it was far easier to just drag them down or up altogether than to untie knots made by a sailor. Sokka let out a yelp when he felt cold air on his exposed posterior, though her legs quickly wrapped themselves behind him, bringing much needed warmth, as well as moving him closer to the origin of her heat as well.

With their naked bodies pressed against each other, the two lovers rolled back and forth on Sokka's bedding, letting muffled, guttural groans and huffs in between their uncoordinated, chaotic moves. Sokka yelped once more when one of them finally undid Suki's bindings, exposing her breasts to the world and to his eyes, which stopped their tandem for a while, at least until Suki pushed his mesmerised face against her chest.

- Kiss me. - she whispered quickly. - W-Where? - a muffled voice escaped from between her mounds. - Everywhere.

She didn't care that his kisses were clumsy and scattered. All Suki needed was the feeling of his lips on her skin, and he delivered exactly that, though he hesitated when he reached her nipples, and needed another encouraging word from her to close his lips around them. And what a difference it was to feel his tongue instead of her own fingertips on her nubs, especially when his thumb toyed with the other one.

Under pleasure, she threw her head back against the soft ground, and Suki found herself staring at the roof of the tent and the roses Sokka prepared for her, while his body pressed hers against the soft material. Her hand slipped to his hair and gently pushed him down, away from her breasts, so that he could venture to a place that desperately needed his attention. And once his trail of kisses reached her sex, Suki instinctively spread her legs, just as Sokka rose from between them, with much confusion on his face.

- Suki, you.... Uh, you're a bit... - Wet, yes. - she nodded encouragingly. - Is-is that good? - Yeah, but you can make it better.

She moved her fingers to her folds, spreading them gently to lure her boyfriend's lips to them with the reflections of flames in the glistening droplets of her juices that has been coating her sex ever since the start of this evening. Cautiously, Sokka's fingers followed hers, and her body reacted accordingly, twitching under his first touch, though as his caresses deepened, so did his fear of making wrong moves.

- Suki, I-I'm really not sure what I should do... - Remember how you didn't know how to kiss? - she asked, meeting his eyes - Well, do the same thing.

He swallowed loudly and pressed his warm lips against her wet folds, unsure what he would experience. And after another spasm of her thighs, he made the first lick, and though he couldn't see it, he most definitely heard her, as her voice cracked again, while his name spilled from her lips. Another lick, and her back arched, and her hand actively pressed his face against her folds. A kiss, and she was wailing, begging him for his touch. With the courage he needed, Sokka stuck his tongue between her pink, twitchy folds, enjoying the somewhat odd form of caresses, and just as he was about to lick her again, the same hand that pressed him against her now pulled him up so he can met her face again.

- Did-did I do something wrong? - N-No it's-it's just... I need you. - Suki spoke in ragged, breathless, needy voice, so different from her restrained one. - Uh, listen, Suki, I don't-I'd never... - Me neither. As if it wasn't obvious... - she joked.

She looked between their bodies at the manhood resting inches away from her wet sex, and as she did so her legs behind his back automatically moved, tightening the lock of their bodies, letting the two finally feel themselves. With her eyes fixated once again on him, Suki sneaked her hand between them and closed around his shaft, which made her realise how she must looked under his gentle touch. Sokka let out a gasp and he nearly collapse on top of her when Suki guided his tip against her opening he was kissing just a minute before.

The two lovers looked at each other, and when Suki saw how his muscular body flexes, she knew what was gonna happen. She raised her legs, grabbed the back of his head and kissed him, just as he moved forward.

She felt ever single inch of him, as he stretched her in a way she so far didn't think was possible. His lips muffled her scream, one of pure joy and fulfilment, which only grew in strength as he moved forward, nagged by her legs locked behind his back. She thought she would feel pain, and truth to be told, at first she did. But with each inch of his length venturing deep down into her, pleasure quickly overtook her mind, so much so that she found herself craving him, and she nudged her feet against his bottom just so Sokka could sheathe himself fully inside her.

And when he did, she finally let go of his mouth, drawing a much needed breath of air while her body arched from their connection. She looked down to meet his eyes and equally flabbergasted expression. The two stayed in their awkward position, until Suki gently nodded and felt every thing once more, when her boyfriend retreated just so he could push himself into her. Her nerves were on fire, in the most unpredictable of ways, but as the heat grew around her and inside her, she didn't care.

All she wanted and soon needed was to reach the same horizon she usually needed her fingers, and sometimes the hand of of her fan for. But now, it was approaching more rapidly than ever, increasing with each thrust Sokka made with his hips. The young man huffed, his ragged breath resembling the one of animal, and though she might have laughed at it any other day, she found it alluring and captivating, especially when she recognised her name amongst his groans.

Her arms closed behind his back, digging her nails into his skin in desperate attempt to stabilise their wild bodies. Without sharing a single warning, they knew what was gonna happen soon, and they wanted to experience it together. His name, spoken just before all air escaped her lungs filled the air in the tent a moment before he cried hers into her chest as he collapsed onto her.

With each hour they spent embraced with each other, their breaths slowly returned to normal, and the two could finally look at each other in a completely new light. Their entire love-making session lasted entire five minutes, but Suki would be lying through her teeth if those were not the best five minutes of her life.

She didn't mind even that Sokka brought a new brand of warmth inside her, and kept doing so with each twitch of his hips. Knowing their lives might be cut short quickly, Suki found herself wishing that his gift might bring a better future faster...

- Beats using your hand right? - she spoke in an attempt to lighten the mood. - Er, y-yeah. - he replied - Suki, that was...

He swallowed, finding his throat exceptionally dry.

- I love you. - I love you too. - Suki smiled and kissed him - And don't worry, you'll last longer next time.

The smile faded away from his face upon her revelation.

- Oh, I-I was supposed to do it longer? - I... I think so. - Suki answered, shying away as well - B-But I don't mind it! Really! You were great! - Okay, Suki, I'm gonna level with you, I had no idea what happened and if I did things right... - Me neither. But I liked it.

The two looked at each other's confused faces, before they erupted into a fit of giggles that culminated with a long kiss Sokka was leading. And with his hands around her, she finally let go, relaxing her muscles, though she still kept her legs wrapped behind his back, rolling back and forth, until she pushed him to his back.

- I hope we didn't wake the others up. - Suki suddenly spoke - I wasn't too loud, was I? - Er, I don't think so. - Sokka shrugged. - I think my shoulder took most of the damage.

He flexed his arm to show her the place around his neck Suki was biting on, visibly reddened.

- Oh, spirits, Sokka, I'm sorry! - Nah, I felt worse. Did I tell you how I got a harpoon stuck in my- - Yes, yes you did. - Suki quickly cut him off.

The two lovers remained in their awkward, somewhat sticky pose, until the Kyoshi warrior spoke what has been on his mind as well.

- Do you want to do it again? - Y-yeah! - Sokka replied at once - If-if you want it. - I do.

She relaxed her grip on him, and sat up, feeling once again his wetness mixing with hers, as well as his manhood slowly becoming hard with the delicate moves of her tight walls around it. She secured her arms against his firm chest, and slowly began moving up and down, already feeling the same giddy excitement building in her loins.

This time, Suki was cautious, she knew that last thing she wants was to give away their private moments, and so she had to bottle up her moans, spilling them only into his skin. She hoped that their evening would remain their sweet little secret, and that knowledge only made her go faster, much to Sokka's delight. His hands moved to her hips, and before she knew it, she no longer cared if she was moaning out loud.

But it didn't matter anyway, because on the opposite side of their campsite, Toph mashed her fingers against her pussy, while her body thrashed against the ground, trying to make her other hand and feet stay on it despite her convulses. Torn with conflicting emotions, Toph on one hand wished she couldn't detect her crush making love to another girl, and at the same time she yearned to see more of his moves, imaging him with her.

And when a few minutes later Sokka flooded Suki with his cum again, and Suki collapsed onto his chest, a third person was torn with climax, gasping and panting from her forbidden fantasy, already feeling the two were about to do it again.

Nights are gonna be difficult from now on.

[pantasticuser]

#emojitober Day 1: 👗🍂☂️

(Hey y'all! Forgot to post here, but better late than never! The prompts for #emojitober is made by @/elentori on Instagram! The character Tyler belongs to my awesome friend @jalexa-jayjay-alexa )

It had been a long day of classes and Hunter was, honestly, exhausted from trying to keep up with deadlines and keep the workload for the week manageable. So, after spending the last three hours stuck inside his dorm, he decided to go for a walk. He stepped out into the cold air with a slight shiver and held his umbrella close as he noticed drops of water fall from the gray sky. 

He didn’t really have a location, per se, just the general direction. In that direction was mostly small shops for clothes and a few cafes scattered along the way, which was most likely where he was aiming for. As he crossed the street onto the sidewalk again, he could remember the way without too much thought, so he wasn’t really paying much attention to his surroundings.

As he turned the corner, he expected to walk down a clear path to his one of the café's he frequented. Instead, he walked right into someone and dropped his umbrella from the slight shock of it, hearing a small yelp from the other party. “Oh my gosh I am so sorry I didn’t see you there-” he looked at the other person and stopped mid-sentence. Whatever he was expecting to see, it sure as hell wasn’t this. Before him stood a cute guy. Not only was this guy cute as hell, but he was wearing a sparkly, very well-fitting blue dress (which was revealing his left leg), with black heels.

“Watch where you’re going next time! This dress isn't exactly meant to get wet,” the beautiful stranger huffed and stepped closer to the building with the small rooftop that was serving as his cover from the rain.

Hunter finally recovered from being in shock of the source of his current gay panic. He cleared his throat, light blush dusting his cheeks as he picked up his umbrella. “Again, I am so sorry. Are you okay?” he held his umbrella up again as he faced him.

 Another huff from the man and an eyeroll, but he nodded. “Yes, I'm fine. Just watch where you're going next time, got it big guy?” he had to look up to a bit to meet Hunter’s eyes despite wearing some heels. Now that Hunter thought about it, why was he wearing all this? It looked more meant for a formal party, yet they were by a line of shops far from anything worth the getup. And no jacket or umbrella? "Aren't you cold?” he asked outright. He didn’t have anywhere to be soon, and he wanted to know more about this guy he had bumped into.

The guy, clearly not expecting Hunter to continue the conversation after his comment, looked at him with raised eyebrow. “Uh, yeah, I guess. Why?” he was probably thinking 

Hunter was some kind of weirdo, and honestly, that was understandable. It wasn’t every day that the person you bump into starts up a conversation. 

“Well it’s just...your dress doesn’t look like it's made for this kind of weather. Doesn’t really help that it’s raining too,” Hunter said with a shrug. “You don’t have an umbrella either and the water is cold.” He glanced the area then back at him, seeing a pout replacing his earlier skeptical look. 

“Alright wise guy, if you really have to know, yes I'm kind of cold. What, you gonna offer to give me a ride out of pity or give me your jacket with your number so I can call to give it back? If you are, that is the lamest type of flirting I've ever seen. That’s so predictable. How about you think of better material next time, alright?” He looked away with his brows now furrowed. Well then. To say that Hunter hadn't expected that was an understatement. 

“okay, I have no Idea where all of..that came from, but that was most definitely not what I was going to suggest. I was just gonna offer to walk you to the café the next block over. Beats just standing out here I'd say. I can share the umbrella too, it’s no bother at all.” Hunter guessed that this guy had already been through guys not taking the hint or that the other was fed up due to his reaction to Hunter’s earlier question. 

The man looked at Hunter in thought in silence for a minute, maybe two. His blue eyes seeming to pierce his own green ones like ice. “...what’s the catch? You can't seriously expect me to just trust you.”

“The only catch is you tell me your name. Just your first one, you don’t have to tell me your last name. I’ll give you mine: it’s Hunter.” he offered a reassuring smile and waited for him to decide. It was another minute without anything being said before the guy sighed. “You look like a Hunter,” he muttered before taking a step closer. “I’m Tyler,” he said reluctantly before walking under the umbrella. “Let's just go okay?”

Hunter chuckled a bit before starting to walk towards the café with Tyler. “Okay Mr. Grumpy dress.” Tyler looked at him and pouted again. Despite not having the greatest first meeting, Hunter thought he had a good chance at making a new friend with Tyler.

[fairy-studies-blr]

This post is all about writing a research/persuasive essay. I’ve combined these into one category because most persuasive essays involve a research component in order to prove your point. The biggest thing to remember with this kind of essay is that you want to get your reader to agree with your argument. To that end, you need to take a strong stance. Now without further ado, let’s get into it.

1. Pick a topic

Before you start researching, look at the essay prompt and write down potential topics for your essay. You don’t have to come up with a full-fledged argument yet, or even know anything about the topics in question. You’re just coming up with some general ideas that you can then use to guide your research.

If you need an example, imagine that you’re instructed to write an essay that deals in some way with colonization. Potential topics could be European colonization of the Americas, the influence of the colonizer's culture, or the effects of colonization today. Writing these things down gives you an idea of what kinds of sources you want to look for, and if you have a topic, you can quickly scan resources to see if they meet your needs instead of having to read through them all the way.

2. Research

Once you have some ideas written down, it’s time to start researching. Now when you're writing academic research papers, you generally want to stick to using only scholarly sources in the paper. A scholarly source can be a peer-reviewed journal, a government publication, a book on the topic, an interview etc. However, the important thing is that the information comes from a credible source, not just the first website that popped up in your google search. This brings me to another point, although google searches are helpful, you’re often not going to find all of the information that you need from a google search.

Where to Find Sources

the library

Google Scholar (be aware that not everything you find will be free to access)

government websites

news sites

databases (These are online repositories for scholarly articles. A very few of them are free, but check and see if your school subscribes to any, as most U.S. colleges do).

Wikipedia (DO NOT cite wiki itself, but read through the article and if you find some information you want to use, click on the blue citation link next to it. This should lead you to the full citation at the bottom of the article and you can use that to find the original source, which is something that you can use in your paper).

If you get stuck, ask your teacher where they recommend that you find sources.

As part of your research, take note of what kinds of arguments different sources are making about your chosen topic. Get an idea of what topics have the most research that’s already been done about them. When it comes time to develop your thesis, you want to create one for which there is already a wealth of information for you to draw from. You don’t have to read the articles all the way through, but do skim them and bookmark the ones that you think will work for your essay. Ideally, you want to have set aside more than the required amount of sources by the time you’ve finished the research process because you never know which ones won’t end up working. If you’re skimming and you find any quotes that you think might be useful later, make sure to highlight them or mark where they are so that you can easily find them later. 

3. Thesis

Once you’ve done some preliminary research, it’s time to come with a thesis. Because you’ve already spent some time researching, you should have an idea of what kind of thesis will be easy for you to support with the sources that you have. Ideally, there’s enough information surrounding your argument that you don’t have to spend too much time hunting for quotes. This is why it’s so important to do research beforehand. If you pick your thesis first, you run the risk of there not being enough materials on your chosen topic. 

Remember that the more specific your thesis is, the better. These kinds of papers are normally making a very specific argument about something. Your thesis should state the argument, and then explain why it is true/correct, but as succinctly as possible.

Take a look at the following thesis statement (which I made up on the spot):

Studies show that pollution is severely tampering with aquatic ecosystems, therefore governments should take steps to counteract this by forcing companies to be more careful about how they dispose of waste.

Notice that this thesis not only tells the reader why pollution is a problem, but it also explains how the author thinks this problem should be solved. In terms of writing a paper, having a narrower thesis like this takes off the pressure to write about everything related to your topic.

4. Finalize Your Sources/Outline

Once you’ve picked your thesis, it’s time to make an outline. Even if you're not a fan of outlines I recommend that you at least write down your thesis and then list the main points you want to cover in proving it. This is also the time to review the sources you set aside earlier, and pick which ones you want to include in your paper. Indicate in your outline which sources you want to include where, whether it’s by copying down actual quotes or just writing in the name of the source. Taking the time to do an outline allows you to check your argument ahead of time, and spot any potential weak spots.

5. Write

In terms of writing the paper, make sure to integrate your quotes correctly. Start by introducing the quote. You can use phrases like, “X says..,” In y’s book she says..,” or “According to z...” Follow up your quotation with a couple sentences where you essentially restate the quote in your own words and then explain why it is important/relevant to your argument. All quotes need to be cited correctly. Usually, you have both an in-text citation and a longer citation that comes at the end in the Works Cited. You can focus on assembling that once you’ve finished writing the paper, but at the very least, you should add an in-text citation as soon as you put in a quote. Otherwise, you stand to forget where you pulled it from (trust me I’ve done that and it’s not pretty). Remember that even if you paraphrase information from a source, you still need to cite it.

Also, beware of having too many quotes and not enough of your own analysis. As a general rule, at least half of each paragraph should consist of your own ideas and/or arguments. You should also aim for a good mix of paraphrased and direct quotes. Try to limit block quotations to one per essay, because otherwise, it can start to look like you don’t have enough of your own words in the paper. While you can use quotes in your introduction and conclusion, they’re not as common because the point of those paragraphs is to introduce and then later conclude the argument being made in the body paragraphs. Also, make sure that you’re not taking quotes out of context.

You should refer to the authors of your sources by their last names only unless you want to introduce them using their full names, and then revert to only their last name the rest of the time.

Finally, when you’re writing persuasive essays, it’s generally a good idea to reference the opposition argument in your paper, so that you can disprove it.

6. Edit

All I’m going to say here is make sure that you read your paper through before submitting it, and check your argument for any weak points. It might be a good idea to have someone else read your paper, and give you feedback on what aspects of your argument are strong, and what aspects need to be improved. Also, citations are extremely important. Use the editing process as a chance to check all of your citations and make sure that they are correct.

I hope you found this post useful. If you have any questions or any other advice to give, either leave a comment or send me an ask. Happy writing!

[calzonekestis]

My Endgame thoughts in 3,160 words and 17,025 characters. Under a cut. Spoilers, obviously.

Really. Truly. The whole thing.

Well. I texted a friend as soon as I got out, and I told him “that was a very good movie peppered with lots of shit that I didn’t care for at all.”

I don’t know what I think about it. If it was good or bad. If I like it or not.

If you read spoilers but didn’t see it, and we’re mad, I get that. I was mad too. I wrote most of this last night, and I’ve had to go back and amend it.

Also, please check your Tony vs Steve bs at the door. I like them both to varying degrees. That said I take issue with Steve’s choices and characterization at the end. We’ll get to that.

The Tony fans at least can say their boy saved the universe. They’re going to be mad still, but at least he went out in the best way possible if he had to die. Which he didn’t, but... we’ll get to that too.

The people who will be mad the most? Cap fans. Sharon Carter fans. Black Widow fans. Thor fans. Iron Man fans, probably, won’t be mad so much as sad. Actually, no, mad, because they probably wanted a happy ending for him.

So yeah. Is it “bad” if it makes so many people mad? Or are they just choices they didn’t like? For me, there was a lot of that. There was also a bit of characterization I didn’t like.

I’ll say this though, because the Steve thing that has everyone mad? I’m mad too, but per their time travel rules?

Steve didn’t erase Peggy’s family. They still exist in our timeline. Steve created a new timeline for himself to go live in. We don’t know if he stopped HYDRA and saved Bucky in that one, but I mean, we can assume.

So everyone complaining that he let all that shit happen? No he didn’t. This is an alternate reality he’s living in now.

If we go by what they established about changing the past not affecting the present.

But then we have Joe Biden Steve at the end, so... unless that’s a Joe Biden Steve who went from his timeline back to ours once he grew old. Not a Steve that existed and lived in the past of our current timeline. Then it actually works without contradicting their own time travel rules.

IMO... they ignored/ruined his character arc... but due to their aforementioned time travel rules, Steve going to the past wouldn’t affect that the present that he’s leaving.

So he COULD stop HYDRA, find Bucky, prevent Howard’s death, warn Hank and Janet about the missile.

That would all be an alternate timeline though, and our Bucky would still be the Winter Soldier.

So yeah, they contradict themselves... and completely fuck over Sharon Carter in the process. You know Steve didn’t tell Sam who his wife was, because he didn’t want him to tell Sharon that after kissing her he went back to marry her Aunt thus creating an alternate timeline to live in.

That’s the present being affected by him going back in time. Your time travel rules suck, Marvel.

So the children and family Peggy had? They still exist in our timeline, but not the timeline Steve created. The reality Steve created.

Okay so they don’t explain it, so this is just me trying to make sense of it myself. They say changing the past doesn’t change the present you left from, so unless Bruce was wrong and they’re contradicting their own rules Old Steve can’t have been actually out there all this time.

So I guess even though he didn’t show up in the gear and with the time machine when we see him, he did earlier, and just went to wait by the lake with the shield to be all dramatic? He probably waited to return until his Peggy died, and then he returned at some random point maybe like a day before they planned to send him back. He knew they would be there, so he just waited in his old man clothes.

That’s all I can think of.

So retroactively?

They had Steve kiss his wife’s alternate reality niece. I like Sharon Carter in the comics, I like what little they did with her on film.

They did her so dirty in the MCU, in the comics Peggy is almost a footnote and just part of his backstory. Sharon is Steve’s true love. Whether you ship them or not, they made Peggy out to be a bigger deal than she is in the source material.

I’m not here for pitting women against each other, but... God, the only woman the MCU has done dirtier is Betty Ross. Who should have been there with her dad at the funeral. Acknowledge her existence, Marvel. Yes they’re estranged, but maybe say having her die made Ross stop being such a dickhead and realize what really mattered.

Calling Peggy the love of his life is bullshit. Yeah, he had a date. Had. He never made it, due to being frozen. I don’t agree that they loved each other, tbh. I saw someone say they each had an idealistic, at times unhealthy attachment... but not love. Frankly? That’s not wrong. They liked each other. It never developed into love. Not in the timeline/reality we followed for the past ten years.

If this was their plan all along, then why did they introduce Sharon as a potential love interest?

Peggy is his past, Sharon is his future. The Lana Lang and the Lois Lane, respectively.

They didn’t plan this. It’s clear by how sloppy it is. It’s just so haphazard and insulting to all the characters involved, and yet Evans seems to be on board with it which disappoints but doesn’t surprise me.

Sharon didn’t have much screentime in the MCU, but every moment she had was important to the plot. She was one of the only agents that questioned Pierce’s orders. She held Rumlow at gunpoint even though the odds were against her. She let Steve know where Bucky was. She gave he and Sam back their gear. A lot of her scenes in Civil War got cut, and she got screwed by making it an Avengers movie instead of a proper Cap film.

She also got screwed by fandom. People acted like known like fucking toddlers, all because she was getting in the way of popular ships. Emily Van Camp was terribly harassed online, people calling her Steve’s beard or that it was icky and gross. Evans even said it was icky, which wasn’t that supportive of him... and then...

I liked Peggy in The First Avenger, but Hayley Atwell’s lowkey/high key narcissism is known within fandom circles, how she turned on Emily Van Camp and Sharon as a whole and threw shade at cons and on twitter and such. That left a bad taste in my mouth where I no longer care for the character at this point.

And they complete ignore/regress Cap’s arc of moving on. The fact he’s not the same man who went into the ice which is something even Whedon realized and addressed when he had him snap himself out of his Scarlet Witch!Vision.

The line from TWS they sampled for the trailer about the world changing and none of them can go back?

That was a lie. What’s ridiculous is that is the same exact directors, same exact screenwriters?

“Some people move on, but not us?” Well in that regard he had, so fuck that.

Speaking of regression, Thor’s?

I’m of two minds. He had depression and PTSD, but in my opinion, that’s end result wasn’t what Thor’s end result would be. He probably felt like he failed his people, but Jesus Christ, turning him into the Big Lebowski... fat jokes...

He becomes king, half his people are slaughtered and then and then he just... abandons the rest? To drink and watch his friends play video games? That’s sad. I think Thor would have felt like he failed and be hurting, but still try to do his best for the people who were left and still needed him? Instead of letting Valkyrie do it and the at the end to officially giving her the burden of ruling and fucking off into space?

And then at the end, he *officially* throws the burden of ruling in Valkyrie’s hands. Not that she isn’t capable, but it isn’t and shouldn’t be her responsibility.

“He’s being who he is, not who he’s supposed to be.”

That would be nice if it didn’t invalidate his arc. He didn’t want to be king at the end of Thor: The Dark World either, but at the end of Ragnarok he accepted it and was at peace with it.

Also, he didn’t need the hammer. Ragnarok made that clear. I’m glad Steve took it back with the stones, and I know it was more Thor needing to know if he was still worthy after becoming Big Lebowski... but it wasn’t needed. They just wanted Cap to wield it, and for them to have something else blunt to hit Thanos with.

This is the easiest money Natalie Portman made in her life. I feel bad for my friend who is a big Jane fan, as it’s literally maybe 15 seconds.

Nice to see Pierce, Sitwell, and Rumlow/Crossbones back, even if it’s only for a flashback and they’re all still dead in our reality. Or it would be, if it didn’t make the latter two out to be dumb. I mean, Rumlow isn’t a genius but he’s not just a dumb meathead. He wouldn’t just hand over the tesseract, he’d bring Cap to his superiors to ask “yeah hey what the fuck?”

Also, having Cap say Hail HYDRA is just... gross.

...Alternate timeline/reality Loki has the tesseract. I guess he’s the one the Disney+ series is going to follow. He’s wiped of all his development, though.

Vision is still dead. I guess maybe Shuri will rebuild him? Or it will take place between Civil War and Infinity War

So Guardians 3 is going to be about finding the alternate timeline Gamora who is now stuck in this one, huh? And I guess Thor is now a Guardian, or he’ll leave them between movies?

The alternate Nebula, I’m torn on. I think they could have gotten through to her, and she would be willing to team up with him. and would be willing to team up with them to kill Thanos. She never told him where the Soul Stone was. I mean, that’s why she aligned herself with Ronan. To kill Thanos. She hates Thanos.

Her wanting to make him proud and earn his favor despite what he did to her is heartbreaking on one hand, but the loyalty, when it’s been shown she’ll be disloyal and desert him if someone promises to kill him... idk. Btw.

Nebula should have gotten to kill Thanos. I don’t care that Iron Man started and is their poster boy. I’m sorry Tony fans. She deserved it more than he did.

Something else I’m curious about... was Peter Parker’s entire class killed? Not just Ned, the whole class. MJ, Flash, etc.? Because his entire supporting cast doesn’t seem to have aged at all in the Far From Home previews.

Also you’re telling me that in those five years, May never confronted Tony? Or if she did, we never saw it? Boo.

Oh, another dumb thing. Banner. Hulk. Professor Hulk. We don’t see how Banner made peace with the Hulk and became Professor Hulk, that all happens offscreen which is so cheap. He’s also just annoying throughout the whole film, and treated as comic relief? Also, the uncanny valley was deep this time around.

I’d honestly rather Cap had died as well, rather than the ending he got. Rather, if old man Steve didn’t show up, and there was just a cliffhanger of him being lost in time? Which has precedent in the comics? That would have been great. Instead of the bad characterization.

I’m indifferent to Tony’s death, honestly. He could have retired and raised his daughter. He could have died. I guess it’s cheaper to just kill him off and not worry about paying Downey for cameos they wouldn’t be able to resist.

Okay, the other death. Nat’s. I don’t care for it, but it worked. When I say it worked, I mean her motivations and the fact she at least had some autonomy. It was still fridging. It’s gross. It sucks.. but at least it wasn’t exactly like Gamora’s where she was a victim. I mean, she is a victim. A victim of gross writing, but... I like the character, you’re killing the only female OG Avenger for angst and drama... I would have preferred it was Renner, but her reasons worked even if I didn’t like it. I do think it would have been even just as heartbreaking/tragic though, it Clint had to give up his life for the hope of getting his family back. A devil’s bargain, they’ll be alive, but you won’t be and won’t see them again.

I question the hell is the point of a Black Widow movie now. Why should we care? Don’t get me wrong I like Nat. I have nothing against self contained, one-off adventures... but... it will be a prequel that doesn’t develop the character at all or see her grow and it’ll be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. It may be enjoyable, but do we need to see it? It’s the Solo situation.

Do we need to see how the character became the character? What purpose does telling her backstory now serve, aside from just making people sad? Do we see how she started so we can appreciate how far she came, though? I can already appreciate that. You don’t need to twist the knife by making her origin her swan song. They can’t bring back our Nat, but who knows. Maybe the next villain will be Kang, and we aren’t done with time travel. Maybe we can have an alternate timeline Nat come into our universe like we did with Gamora.

A timeline where Clint was the one to die. I can deal with that, if they give ScarJo the money. I guess.

SCOTT LANG SAVED THE UNIVERSE. Well, actually. Also, a rat. A rat is responsible for saving the universe. I mean I laughed, but we couldn’t see Scott get himself out? He’s still my boy.

He’s probably my favorite character in the film. Seeing him and Hope reunite in the end battle was nice and made me happy, the way they didn’t miss a beat and got to working together. Him trying to keep it together when he talked about losing her. The end scene with them and Cassie. The fact she called Cap “Cap” and they shared a glance. Sucks for Scott to have missed five years of his daughter’s life, through.

Also, it kinda sucks that along with the people brought back, they couldn’t bring them the likes of Frigga and Quicksilver. Yes, they died, but you can still revive them in the present. You don’t have to make it so they never died. Maybe Quicksilver will Maybe in the WandaVision show, especially now that they won’t have to worry about a competing Fox version. Introduce her ability to warp reality. He was rumored to have been on set, and so I was expecting to see him in a flashback at least. Alas.

SPEAKING OF REVIVING DEAD CHARACTERS THOUGH. Why couldn’t like, Carol, use the gauntlet to revive Tony before they sent the stones back? She could take it. He didn’t need to stay dead, except for the fact... you know... Downey is expensive.

Something I find hilarious?

The kid from Iron Man 3 is at the funeral.

That kid knew nothing about the film whatsoever, except for the biggest spoiler? Cause if they invite HIM back to be at a funeral scene... whose funeral would it be, that he would attend, aside from Tony’s?

Oh, and SamCap. People, calm down.

I like Sam, Sam is worthy of the shield, Bucky’s not quite in a place where he’s ready for it anyway. In the comics Bucky becomes Cap, and then Sam becomes Cap after him. They can reverse the order. Bucky can still become Cap after him. Sebastian still has four movies left in his nine movie deal.

I’m curious about the Disney+ show now though. If it will be retitled, if they announced a fake title ala Serpent Society for Civil War. Although. I have a fear.

I don’t trust Marvel and I can see them killing Sam by the end of the Falcon & Winter Soldier series.

And then Bucky will take up the shield. Mackie’s 40. Idk how much longer he’ll want to be doing this, and he’s said in interviews he had no interest in bringing Cap and would like to see Sebastian take a crack at it, that he likes Falcon being Falcon.

Maybe age isn’t a factor. Bettany’s in his 40’s. Cheadle’s in his fifties. Paul Rudd is an ageless immortal who claims to be fifty. None of those are physically demanding roles though, not to the scale of Cap. The closest would be Chadwick Boseman, who is a year older at 41.

Age aside, I can see them doing it. That’s kinda the shit Marvel would do.

“Yay! We’re so progressive! We’re making Sam Captain America to placate his fans before we kill him! We won’t do that *just* yet in Endgame, we’ll wait to kill the black guy until he’s done helping out this other white guy figure out his place in the world!”

Now I’m gonna be anxious about that for the next year or two.

But so I think the shows are for characters on the shelf movie wise. Idk if when the show is over, we’ll see Mackie as Captain America in Avengers 5. It would be cool, but idk.

I don’t know if they’re even thinking of Avengers 5 at this point, or plotting out things like Guardians and Black Panther and Captain Marvel. And Eternals. And all their new Fox characters.

I guess the new Avengers line up will be Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Wasp, SamCap, and Spider-Man? Maybe Doctor Strange?

Wanda retires to TV. As does Clint maybe, to train Kate Bishop and/or his daughter. Rhodey and Banner are just around.

Also. Banner and Thunderbolt Ross, at the end. Ross and the Hulk. Both in the same scene. Neither acknowledging each other or having any interaction whatsoever. Odd.

I keep hearing rumors about a Thunderbolts movie tho, from someone who was accurate with all of their Endgame leaks. I wonder if they want Ross to be the Fury of that which is why they’ve kept him around.

Bucky recently led the Thunderbolts but also Zemo is so ingrained in their history and I don’t see them working together at all.

I guess you could bring in Bernthal’s Punisher by that point if you want. Elektra. They won’t do it but they could.

Ghost would be a good fit, tho I don’t wanna see her be forced to kill people again. I can see them forcing her to work of a sentence. If she’s still alive, cause God if she was snapped and went 5 years without the Quantum energy... but yeah.

Bring back The Leader as a villain finally. Crap, I’m plotting a fanfiction.

https://twitter.com/rogerwardell/status/1070465411387404289?s=21

Idk. I just. Am disappointed but not surprised tbh.

Everyone knows I don’t like MCU Clint, but the callback interaction between he and T’Challa with the latter remembering his name was nice I guess. The final battle as a whole was nice I guess.

OH. And the exchange between Dr. Strange and Wong about if he brought everyone, and if he anted more? Probably not the intent, but to me it just seemed like a big “shut up” to everyone wanting the Netflix and Agents of SHIELD characters to cross over.

Also, a final critique?

The whole fake scripts, not giving actors a script thing. I hate it. I know like Mark Ruffalo and Tom Holland are notorious for letting spoilers slip, but I legit believe that a reason why A LOT of the actors got fake scripts was not to prevent spoilers but to prevent any of them going full Ed Norton and throwing a fit about the quality of said script.

Not letting the actors know the context of the scene they are performing is not only disrespectful but it’s broken and what can you expect but performances where they’re legitimately incapable of giving it their all?

That’s all I got for now. I guess.

I know it’s a joke, “I loved everything except for the stuff I didn’t” but seriously? I enjoyed everything except for the stuff I hated. Does that stuff ruin the movie? Do I not like it because I’m petty, or because it’s bad? You can not like something, it doesn’t mean it’s bad... but I think certain choices... were bad. Were very bad.

Was it shit sandwiched with awesome, or awesome sandwiched with shit? Do they balance each other out? Your mileage may vary. I haven’t decided yet.

EDITED: I replied to this in another post, a point by @chujo-hime, but I’ll copy/paste it on here since more people are likely to see this than our conversation.

“There’s no point in doing BuckyCap now that they’ve fridged Natasha”

I can’t fault you for feeling that way, and I don’t entirely disagree. have a theory on how Natasha could return despite them saying it couldn’t be undone.

Do what they did with Gamora. Take a version from an alternate universe/timeline. Maybe one where everything is the same, except that Clint died instead of her.

Whether or not they do this? Doubtful. Unless with the money they’re saving by letting another actor go (ahem) they give it to ScarJo to lure her back.

I mean, they have Kang back now. Next to Ultron, he’s one of The Avengers’ biggest villains. He’s also a time traveler, so there are ways… idk.

I’ve still not fully processed it. Whether Marvel is smart enough or cares to take advantage of their out, they have it. If nothing else, fans can exploit it in Fix-It fics.

ANOTHER EDIT:

Oh, what was the point of Ronin? I don’t mean sad Clint, I mean Ronin, aside from selling more action figures? He wasn’t even Ronin, they made him into The Punisher Lite. Ronin wasn’t Ronin, but I mean Clint hasn’t been Clint imo so...

[overanalyzingelswordiswhatido]

12 to 1 Chapter 8

Snowball was curled up on the pillow she sat on through the night, asleep. Add felt bad but he still woke her up. He was sure going outside in the snow would be better to her than taking a nap. When the cat woke up, Add picked her up and carried her out of his room. He just managed to catch Eve while she was talking to Elesis outside her room. “Eve!”

Eve turned to him, “Hello, Add.” She glanced at Elesis who just shrugged.

Add didn’t pay any mind to the redhead as his question was much more immediate and certainly more important than whatever Elesis had to talk about. “You have minerals and stuff in your lab, right?”

Eve nodded.

Add smiled, “Can I have some? I want to do an experiment.”

“What kind of experiment?” Eve asked.

“I wanna see how much salt I have to add to the snow to turn it into a battery,” Add stated plainly.

“What the-For the love of the El Lady, Add!” Elesis stared at him.

Eve immediately shook her head, “No. I’m not going to provide you the materials for that.”

“Why not?!” Add demanded.

“It’s not anything that would aid the search party in anyway,” Eve answered calmly.

Add sulked. He stormed off, back down the stairs. “Give me just a second,” he set Snowball on the couch so that he could grab salt from the cabinets. She followed him, as she was prone to doing whenever she wasn’t sleeping. Dynamo of course, could provide the electricity, and he had spare wires in his own lab that he could grab. He headed for the kitchen and made certain to check the labels, since sugar wouldn’t do what he wanted.

“Careful, Add,” Ciel warned. “Aisha switched the labels again.” It appeared he was helping Rena make breakfast now.

Add stared at him, “What?! That’s not even fair!” One of the few times he actually checked the label and Aisha messed it up?! He looked around, “Where’s the salt then?”

Ciel looked around, “Well, the shaker is in the spice cabinet. And the baking jar is on the counter right there.” He pointed to it.

“I want the big jar!” Add insisted.

“Why?” Rena paused what she was doing to look at him.

“Cuz I need it for something,” Add mumbled. Since telling Eve what he wanted to do made her tell him no, he didn’t want to mention it and possibly ruin his chances at getting it at all.

“What do you need it for?” Rena asked.

“Well…” Add looked away. He desperately tried to come up with an explanation Rena would agree to. He really needed to start being more prepared for situations like this. Even though he said that to himself every time, he never was.

“He wants to turn the snow outside into a battery,” Eve answered calmly as she walked into the kitchen to get some tea out of the fridge.

Ciel and Rena both stared at Eve for a moment. Ciel turned a bewildered look to Add, “Why?”

Add shuffled his feet and looked down, “To see if I can.”

Rena sighed, “Why am I not surprised?”

“Maybe because he gave us the same reasoning after making a spider using a potato as a power source?” Ciel commented with a chuckle.

Add snickered. He terrorized an entire town with that potato spider. It managed to get out one of the windows because he gave it the ability to jump. He did design it to terrorize Aisha, but it getting out and starting a panic was probably one of his greatest achievements. He was never going to top that. Unfortunately, the others brought it back to him in pieces, since they couldn’t shut it off, and Rena banned potatoes. She also used the rest of the potatoes they had to make a stew that night. It was almost all potatoes and it was disgusting.

Add looked at Rena, “Am I not getting the salt?”

Despite how amused she seemed, Rena shook her head, “No. You’re not getting the salt.”

Add looked away, “Okay.” He dragged his feet while he walked toward the door that would take him out to the yard. At the very least he could hang out with Snowball while she played outside. He wasn’t going to keep that from her just because he didn’t have anything to do.

“Hey Add!” Ara greeted him the moment he stepped outside.

“Hey.” Add didn’t look at her. He looked around. Aisha and Chung were helping Ara build a snowman. Elesis, Elsword, Lu, Rose, Ain, and Raven were all in the middle of a snowball fight in the center of the yard. Elesis, Elsword, and Lu appeared to be working as a team to beat Raven, Ain, and Rose who were also a team.

During the summer the yard doubled as a training area so that they could “keep their skills sharp” as Raven would say. All the training stuff was in the shed. For some reason, in the winter, they went to the designated training area outside of town. Once Add thought about it, it was probably because no one wanted to risk destroying one of the snowmen Ara, Chung, Aisha, and Rena made every year. They made enough for a small army.

Add still needed to get Aisha back for switching the salt and sugar labels. He frowned. Dynamo identified patches of ice under the thick layer of snow that covered everything past the patio. The stairs, especially, were dangerous.

Careful to avoid the ice patches, Add made his way to the edge of the patio. He experimentally picked up some snow but it fell through his fingers like sand. He frowned and picked his way over to Elesis, making sure to stay well out of range of the flying snowballs for as long as he could. He tugged on her coat, “Hey. How do you make snowballs?”

“Huh?” Elesis grinned, “Here. Watch.” She picked up some snow and squeezed her hand shut over it. When she opened her hand, the snow was compacted into the shape of the inside of her fist. She piled more snow onto it, pressing it into itself each time until it was about the size of her palm and vaguely spherical in shape. She shook the excess off but made sure not to shake so hard that she destroyed it. “Tada!” She held it up for him to see.

“Then you throw it at somebody!” Lu declared excitedly.

“You should throw it at Raven,” Elsword encouraged.

Add looked across to Raven. He shrugged. He already knew exactly who he was going to throw it at but she wasn’t involved in the snowball fight. At least… not yet. He knelt down and scooped up some snow. Following how Elesis showed him, he made his first snowball. Add made a big show of looking around before throwing it. Dynamo projected the proper arc to throw it to get it right over Rose’s shoulder to hit his target. He took a moment to study the arc before he threw the snowball.

As predicted, it flew right past Rose and smacked Aisha in the back of the head. She yelped and rubbed the back of her head. Add laughed. He knew it made him obvious but that was part of the fun. Even if the magician got mad, there wasn’t anything for her to do about it.

“Add! be nice!” Ara called but Add ignored her and kept laughing.

Elesis wasn’t impressed, “You’re always picking on Aisha. Couldn’t you have chosen somebody else today?”

Add shook his head, “She picks on me.”

“Getting you back for all the shit you pull is not picking on you,” Elesis argued.

Add shrugged, “So? It’s part of our deal. We made one. With Rena.” He looked Elesis in the eyes, “'As long as no one gets hurt then no one will get in trouble’. That’s what Rena said.”

“Guess what, you little shit?” Aisha snapped angrily, “That hurt!” She stalked across the yard until she was standing right in front of him.

“You could’ve ruined my entire experiment by switching labels!” Add snapped back. He wasn’t the least bit intimidated. Aisha was all bark anyway. If he annoyed her enough then she would just cry to Elesis. There was nothing Elesis could do because of their deal with Rena. Besides. Elesis wasn’t the boss of him.

“What experiment?” Aisha demanded.

“Well, Rena’s not letting me do it now. But I was going to do one that involved salt!”

“If you’re not doing it then it can’t be ruined!”

“It’s not like a snowball can cause any permanent damage,” Add smirked at her. She would be stupid to try arguing that point with him.

“That’s not what Rena said is it?” Aisha demanded. “She said as long as no one gets hurt.”

“You’re gonna make a big deal out of a snowball?” Add demanded.

“If it hurt, it’s worth make a big deal out of,” Elesis told him with an edge to her voice.

“But that’s easily solved,” Add reasoned since he didn’t really want to make Elesis angry per se. Just annoyed. “Snowball fights are a game. If she makes one then she can throw it at me.”

“Yeah,” Ara nodded. Add hadn’t noticed her or Chung follow Aisha up.

Raven had approached as well, “Aisha and Add can join our separate teams and play.” He fixed them both with a very firm almost glare, “But I expect you not to exclusively target each other. It’s a full team game.” He looked at Add, “Aisha gets a free shot.”

Add stared at him. He opened his mouth to argue but gritted his teeth instead. Raven’s face was already angry enough. He didn’t want to risk actually setting the man off.

Aisha glared at Add. “Don’t expect me to go easy on you just cuz your a kid now.” She stalked angrily over to where Raven’s team was gathered.

Add stuck his tongue out, “It wouldn’t be any fun even if you went full force.” Dynamo created a “randomized” order in which to target Raven’s team and he set to work making snowballs. He scowled when he heard Ain offer to help Aisha get him back. It’s not like the angel could hit the broad side of a barn at this distance anyway so it didn’t matter. Once Add got bored, he would go back inside to see if Ciel would get Kingdom Hearts for him. For now though, this should be entertaining enough.

[vampirefreakism]

The Scientist (Chapter 26)

Summary: In the events following Asgard’s destruction, Loki finds himself on Earth seeking refuge to await the inevitable. Much to his surprise, it comes from a source he would never have expected.

AO3 Link

The Soundtrack So Far

Warnings: some fluff, some tension, idk ice? cold stuff?

Word count: 3.9k

A/N: Tell me something: why do I have to make these chapters so long? Why can't I be a more normal writer and release chapters that are, at most, 2k words in length? At this rate, I'll be 250k+ words before I'm done and omfg that's an "at least" prediction. Anywho, I'm seeing Captain Marvel tomorrow, and I am so excited. My soul might leave my body and transcend into the next dimension all from my love for women. Hell to the yeah, folks.

Masterlist

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The voice of the newscaster resounded about the shared apartment, holding the attention of one Norse god. His human companion sat near him, on the floor, still in the process of fixing his damaged armored suit. The rips and tears littering it were all stitched up using various techniques, and the scuffs and stains all distant memories. The boots and shoulder pieces, however, were a challenge. They were not ripped but scraped and frayed. Such damage to hard material could not be sewn back together or scrubbed clean with soap, water, and alcohol.

Luna grabbed a few extra items from her room – quick-dry epoxy, a scrap piece of cardboard, and a flat stick – she believed would work in laying down and repairing the tattered areas. Loki kept a watchful eye on her, as he always did when she handled his close personal belongings. She didn’t mind. It was the one time she meddled in the things she hadn’t bought him, so as per common decency, she handled them in front of him.

“You think that’ll work?” Loki chimed, his green gaze set on the woman seated on the floor.

She lifted her eyes to meet his. “In fixing it? I sure hope so.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“I just keep trying different things until I feel like giving up.” Luna returned her attention to the shoulder piece.

She smoothed the clear epoxy mix firmly and carefully till it was too tacky to continue. Slowly, she switched to the other side. The layers made it tricky, but she had all evening if she didn’t want to leave the house. Loki was satisfied for the moment, the fridge was stocked with enough leftovers to last them the weekend, and, in case they were plagued by unwanted sleepless nights or the occasional dark emotion, the freezer had plenty of ice cream pints.

Loki stuck to his program. The subject matter interested him in a way Luna could not fathom. To each his own, she reminded herself. If he didn’t attempt to create unrest under her roof, he could do as he liked. She liked the peace in her home too much to let someone else disturb it. It seemed he liked it as well and took steps on his own to ensure it.

Satisfied with the job she had done, Luna slowly got up, suit top in hand, and walked it to the empty chairs by the counter. She set it down on one, resting the undried epoxy patches away from any surface. She dusted her hands. Another job well-done, if she said so herself.

Upon returning from putting her supplies back where they came from, Loki called her attention.

“Tell me, who is that?” He pointed to the television playing a local news station, in particular at the figure the story was about.

“Him?” Luna confirmed. “That’s our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.”

“Oh, I know that but who is he exactly? Beneath the mask?” Loki was a tad perturbed.

Luna shrugged and lied. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t think anyone does.”

“They trust a hero they cannot see? Odd concept.” The master of lies believed her. Another victory of the day.

“I'm sure people are skeptical, but he's never done anything malicious, and he helps out the little guy. You know, the underappreciated.” A little slice of truth for him.

“Huh. I suppose he is appealing.” Loki crossed his arms and observed the individual clad in red and blue. “Is he an Avenger?”

Luna chuckled, shaking her head. “Oh, no. No, he is not. Good thing, too.”

“How come? He seems capable enough.” Luna paused.

“Because, uh, he, uh, that’s his job. You know, he’s more of a freelance vigilante than one tied to an organization like the Avengers.” She could see the look on Loki’s face. He didn’t believe her for a second. “You know, I don’t really know. You know I mainly keep to myself, so any newbies go right under my nose.” She waved a hand in the air.

“Mm-hm.” Loki eyed her, not sounding convinced, but he didn’t need to be yet. Luna feigned ignorance well enough.

The pair watched the rest of the program with Luna now perched atop the couch arm. She was at a loss for what to fill the rest of her afternoon and evening with. The oncoming snow storm looked to be getting worse each day it didn't show. There was residual fear of being snowed in, or at least cautioned to not venture outside. Shopping needed to be done, and additional activities had to be seen to, for either of the apartment occupants could easily succumb to cabin fever. Loki was a patient fellow and didn’t show his restlessness easily, but he hated being cooped up as much as Luna did.

An idea popped into her head, making Luna snap her fingers. “Hey, after we do some shopping, how about we do something?”

“What kind of something?”

“A fun something, at least before it snows. Like, uh,” she tapped her lower lip, “ooh! Like ice skating! If we go now, we can make it before there are too many people.”

“Ice skating?” Loki was perplexed. “Where would we be going?”

"Rockefeller Center," Luna said as she scurried to her room. “It's stunning this time of year." She called out. She shuffled back into the living room, phone in hand. “Ok, I can reserve some tickets online. So, yes or no?”

“This place is not in Manhattan…is it?” Loki asked tentatively.

Luna paused. “Yeah, but you’ll be fine. It’ll be fine,” she said quickly, waving a hand around. “Come on, let’s get ready. We need to at least get you a coat before we’re snowed in for a week.”

--------------------

“You know, I don’t even really need the coat. My jacket is enough,” Loki said, grabbing cradling his rental skates. The new garment reminded him a bit too much of his Stuttgart outfit, and it was wholly disconcerting.

Luna picked up her pair after him. “I am aware, Mr. The-Cold-Never-Bothered-Me-Anyway, but it is about 30 degrees out and getting colder, and since we’re going to be around a lot of people, you not wearing a coat would be cause for alarm.” She hastened over to a free bench and sat down. Loki followed suit and took his place by her side.

He watched as she pulled her boots off, stretched a foot out, and force it into the bladed skating boot. She repeated the action with her other foot and laced them up with practiced precision. Loki looked at his own and copied her to the best of his ability. The crisscross of the laces he was able to get, but their desired tightness proved more difficult.

Luna had tested her laces a few times – loosening them, retying them, standing up, and repeated the procedure – before Loki first finishing his. Luna stood upright and firm as though she were on the flats of her feet, not balanced on the edges of twin blades. She shifted her weight from left to right and felt satisfied. Loki mimicked her, but he did not feel the same.

With a stumble, he sat down and roughly undid his laces. Luna, noticing his agitated state, sat back in her spot.

“Aren’t you supposed to be an expert with the blade?” She joked, hoping to dissipate some of Loki’s frustration.

“Yes, in wielding them. Not wearing them.” He quipped back with an evident edge in his voice.

Luna knocked the edge of her boot against his. “You can wield these too. They can cause some serious damage if they’re sharp enough. I’ve pricked myself on my own skates more times than I can count when I was younger.”

Loki fiddled with the stray lace. “You did this a lot?”

“Oh, yes. I used to be quite the figure skater.” Luna smiled, recalling the memories from her youth.

“Figure skater?” Loki pondered, knitting his brows. None of his investigative endeavors have yet provided an inkling of this kind of information. He was curious.

“It’s like ballet, but on the ice.” Luna glanced down at Loki’s still-undone boots. “Here, let me do that for you.” She twisted around to straddle the bench they sat on and spun her hand around, gesturing for Loki to do the same. He did as she asked and faced her full-on.

Wishing to get on with the task, Luna gave Loki’s left leg two firm pats for him to lift it. She had to scoot back once he stretched it out. It was easy to forget how long he was. She maneuvered his foot into a proper resting position and got to work, loosening and retightening his shoe.

Loki felt the tap-tap of her fingers through the thick material, but her light touch barely preoccupied his thoughts. It was clear he did not know everything about her and his snooping could only take him so far. He wondered how much her Avengers knew. If they knew more than him. He felt jealousy grow at the prospect of missing out. However inconsequential it may be, Loki loved being the first in the know about everything.

Tentatively, he continued the conversation. “You miss it?”

Luna looked up from her task. “Hmm?” With his head, Loki gestured to the skate in her hand. “Oh. Uh, yeah.” She nodded, a little despondent. “I almost completed my training when I had to stop.”

“What made you? Stop, I mean.”

“School.” She jerked his foot a bit as she fastened the laces around the metal loops. “I had to choose between spending my time practicing triple axels and working on homework and, well,” she chuckled, “my three science degrees should be enough to tell you what my decision was.” A few more tugs and a knotted bow finished the job. “Alright, circle your foot around. You want it to feel firm on the joint, but not painfully so.” Slowly, Loki lifted his foot and rotated it clockwise, switching directions once he felt satisfied. “How is it?” Luna asked.

“It’s good,” Loki muttered.

“Good,” Luna echoed, smiling lazily and placing a hand on his opposite knee. “Now for the next one.”

--------------------

Loki, gripping the edge of the rink wall, stood as static as his body would allow. “So how on earth do you move with these?” He was capable on the ice, but the kind he has experienced in the past was always blanketed with a thin layer of snow. The surface beneath him now beheld no such traction.

Before him, Luna kept a watchful eye on his posture. “You just, you know, stand. Like this.” She presented her feet, the blades positioned in a small V. “And push with the edge.” Her foot facing away propelled her forward to Loki’s side.

“I've been doing that, and it's not working.”

“That’s because you’re treating it like you’re walking.”

“Oh, you make it sound so easy.” Loki sneered a little.

Luna let out a low groan and moved backward to stand face-to-face with him. "Pretend you’re dancing. Feel the ice beneath you and use it. Follow it as you would a partner. And, if you want,” she held her gloved hands out, “I can help lead you.”

Loki kept watch of her open hands as he slowly extended one of his towards them. Settling a firm grasp on the one he held, he let the other follow. “Don’t worry, I got you,” Luna sent him a sweet smile, careful not to lose her grip on him. Loki presented himself as calm. He had captured the attention of the right person and, though he loved attention, was intent on not drawing more.

“Now, stand up a little straighter and push gently.” Loki did as he was told and pushed with the blade at an angle. Luna glided backward, guiding him steadily over the shallow divots in the ice. “And again. And again. See?” With a pivot of her foot, she swiveled to stand beside Loki, still holding onto the hand furthest from the wall. “Not so hard.”

Loki looked down at her, smirking a little, and nudged her. “Well, I have an excellent teacher.”

Luna giggled and bumped him back. “Hey, don’t jinx it just yet. The last time these skates were sharpened was probably during the time of Lewis and Clark, and this ice is already pretty cut, so it’s very easy to trip on.” A glance down confirmed her feet to be at a safe distance from Loki’s. “Fresh, smooth ice is like heaven to be on, but you probably know that already.”

Loki hummed in response. He had an idea of how it would be. Being on the ice at this moment was pleasant. In tandem, they skated in silence, staying close to the wall for safety but far enough away to let other struggling patrons cling to it.

The cold crept up on Loki, quickly and quietly. It didn’t hurt him like it would a human, but he knew it was there. The air alone took less from him than if he came into contact with the ice itself. One touch from his bare hand may expose him. He wasn’t willing to take the risk. Not in a crowded area filled with people whose lives he had directly affected. He was lucky to be holding the hand of someone with a giving and forgiving heart. The couples and families around him would not grant him as much grace, no matter what pretty lies he may spin.

His eyes strayed from the people in front of him to the decorations above and around him. The settling darkness in the sky enhanced the brightness of the colored lights. The ice reflected them, making it seem like he was floating above a white sea of rainbow stars. The Christmas tree stood high above them, a beacon of glad tidings during a happy season. A sweetness settled within Loki’s heart, but it did not come without a thin lining of bitterness.

“Answer me something,” he asked Luna.

“Okay,” she replied, keeping her voice hushed.

Loki paused, feeling the words circle about, and spoke. “Was this place destroyed?”

“When?” Luna knew what he was referring to, but she had to make sure.

“During…,” Loki looked down, “my first visit.”

“Probably,” she stated, “but look how nice it is right now.”

Loki didn’t bother. Visions of destruction plagued his mind, obscuring his view. He enjoyed the place and his present company. Thinking of it no longer existing didn’t sit well with him.

Luna sensed the storm brewing inside him and squeezed his hand. “Don’t dwell on it.”

“Why not? It’s my wrongdoing.”

“Because it doesn’t do any good. Dwelling never fixes anything.”

Loki blinked and looked down at the crown of Luna’s head as he regarded her statement. The first time she had confronted any issue regarding his past, and it was over and done with before he could spare any additional words. And how nonchalant she was about it. Loki was almost convinced she had forgotten about the incident or never heard of it. No, she was worlds smarter than that. Loki was the one who forgot and took her for granted. She was as merciful as she was gracious.

Yes, dwelling doesn’t fix anything. He would follow her example and brush it off for a time when it is a problem, for it wasn’t now.

Carefully, Loki changed the subject. “You know, many centuries ago, people used these as a method of transportation.”

Luna peered up at him, eager to know the context with which he spoke. A tilt of his head towards the ground gave her what she needed to continue.

“And you traveled with them, I suppose?”

Loki snickered. “Heavens, no. That was well before my time, around the era of my grandfather Bor’s rule.”

“Did you know him?”

He paused. “Also before my time.”

“I never knew my grandfathers either. One died of cancer; the other, a stroke.” Luna caught herself. It was early enough to stop. “Sorry. You didn’t need to know that.”

Alas, more information Loki couldn’t find in her diaries. “What do you know about them?” He had to know more.

“Well,” Luna assembled her words, “I know I would have liked one more than the other. But isn’t that how it is with all family?”

Loki let out a laugh. “How right you are.” Memories of times passed surfaced here and there in his thoughts. Yes, how right she was. If she only knew how much.

Unabashedly, as his gaze fell elsewhere, Luna admired him. She had gotten him to smile out of genuine amusement. And his laugh. A reward in and of itself. ‘Tamed the beast,’ an onlooker might say. But such a statement couldn’t be farther from the truth. He was no beast.

The two skated further around the rink, passing straggling children trying to stay on two feet and teens doing their best not to get too rowdy. No one bothered to notice them. Glances were spared only to prevent any unnecessary collisions. They spoke naught for they felt no need to. The peace they achieved at home had extended out past the threshold. To say the least, it was nice. Others could do the chattering in their place. Until, of course, one decided to take the reins.

“So, is it true?” Luna asked, a slight smirk making its way onto her face.

“Is what true?” Loki asked back, not bothering to look away from the ice before him.

“About Sleipnir?”

Confusion passed over Loki, as such a thing had not crossed his mind in many a moon. But, he caught on to what she meant and snickered lightly. “Dear, no. He was real, yes, but he was another being from before me. I took a liking to the creature while in my youth and most people mocked me for it, aptly calling me his ‘mother.’”

Luna smiled at the sentiment. “That’s nice you gave him company, though. How beautiful he must have been.”

“Quite so. A magnificent animal. Odin didn’t appreciate him properly, but then again, he rarely did with anything." Rather than get into another tense topic, Loki dispelled any increasing strain. “However, perhaps in another universe, he would have been my true son.”

Luna paused and tittered a little. “Yeah, and you would have vibrant red hair and a whole wife.”

“My goodness, just imagine!” Loki bolstered, pulling a laugh from her.

Moments like these granted him a precious second to admire the beauty of his young friend. Could he call her ‘friend?’ As he thought on how delightfully warm he found her smile, he found himself treading back into dangerous territory. Friends, in his experience, were never around for long and he was so blinded by the wishful thinking he couldn't catch their lies until it was too late for his heart. Maybe they did like him, but they never preferred him. Then again, they were not her. None from his past were like her, and perhaps it would be alright for him. But, for now, only the Norns could tell.

Before long, announcements were made for all active skaters to vacate the rink for the Zamboni to makes its rounds. Luna and Loki took their sweet time, unlike a select few who thought it would be fun to race to the exit. The loud, rapid scraping of their blades alerted those around to their oncoming presence; a presence Luna did not keep track of.

Heads were turned, and gazes averted. The instance spelled disaster. Luckily, Loki possessed a distinct taste for it. He felt the moment coming a breath before anyone else did. One individual was going too fast, got bumped by a friend, and was careening towards the spot Luna was gliding towards. With a rough yank, Loki took hold of her and moved her out of the stranger’s path. He held her tight against the wall to prevent her from slipping and rendering his efforts naught. The stranger recovered quickly, threw them an apology, and continued on their way.

The two stood for a spell; Loki’s arms around her torso and Luna’s hands gripping his coat’s collar. Slowly and steadily, he leaned back.

“Are you alright?” He asked, a bit breathless.

“Uh-huh, yeah.” Luna moved her hands to the sides of his shoulders. “Thanks,” she whispered. He was closer than usual. Not something she was used to.

“Of course,” he whispered back as he stared into her eyes. They were full and dark from the night sky, shining in the lights from above. Again, they captured him. Inconveniently, at best, but it couldn’t be helped.

Time caught up, and Luna slid her hands down to his biceps with the sole purpose of gently pushing him off, but one touch and she stopped. The words of May Parker surfaced in her mind. Loki was indeed firm and strong by the way he held her. She knew so from her first dance with him but feeling him again like this was a whole other matter. Coupled with the intenseness of his gaze, he made her feel hot under the collar. A completely involuntary reaction. It couldn’t be helped.

Dragging herself back into reality, Luna gave his arm a tap. “We, uh, we should get going before we’re forcibly removed.”

“Oh, yes,” Loki muttered, pulling back and standing at his full height. He gestured to the ice in front of them on the path to the gate. Ever the gentleman, he allowed Luna to go first if she wished. Eager to escape the awkward situation, she took the invitation and skated off with Loki trailing behind her.

In the sitting area, they sipped on individual hot chocolates and let their minds scramble in different directions. No thought led gracefully to another. The abruptness of their proximity left no room for control. They faked it well, though. Luna gradually regained it by tapping out the beat to a song playing over the speakers.

The first thing she consciously felt was comfortable. A bit rattled from the experience, but not wishing she could get away from Loki. She didn't have to try with him, in the best way. She'd admit it was scary, for it might be too good to be true. She wondered how he was in his past. If anyone else felt like this around him. Perhaps they did. Maybe it was none of her business. No harm in imagining, though.

“You must have had a lot of friends on Asgard,” she said, snapping Loki out of whatever musing he was in.

He turned the cup around in his hand. “Why would you think something like that?”

“Because it takes no energy to hang out with you.”

Loki creased his brow. “Thank…you?” In all his years, never had he heard something like that.

Luna laughed, a little nervous. “No, no, it’s a good thing. It’s inviting, at least to people like me.” She fiddled with the plastic lid, trusting he could see what she meant. The growing grin on his face gave her a hint of what he felt.

“Well, for your sake,” he held up his half-empty cup, “I’m glad,” and tapped it gently against hers.

Cheers to someone who preferred his company. Cheers to someone he liked to be around. Cheers to his beautiful friend named after the moon.

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Taglist:  @the-doctor-9-10 @pinkieperil @sherlockfan4life

[astarisms]

sacrilege

pairing: natan word count: 1875 warnings: suggestive themes, profanity notes: this is just a part of a church camp au me and @crowbie came up with. maybe they’ll be more in the future but for now, have this.

Natalie woke up with one pounding headache, zero memory of the night before, and, after counting twice to make sure, eight hickeys.

In short, she was very confused and very sick.

She took an ibuprofen and moved slowly until it began to kick in. Her headache didn’t go away, but it became bearable. She tried to use foundation to cover up the evidence of her night, but that didn’t work as well as she hoped.

She chewed on her lower lip before pulling her hair over her shoulders and situating it to hide them. When she walked back into her room, Laila was doing her makeup.

Natalie shifted, wondering if it could have been her. She didn’t know how to ask without bringing attention to the fact that she had eight glaring pieces of evidence as to how her night had gone.

It was embarrassing to not remember who had left them.

“So, Laila…” she started, figuring she might as well try.

“What’s up, McAllister?”

“Did you... do anything uh, fun last night?”

“Fun?” Laila asked, arching an eyebrow at Natalie through her mirror. Natalie shifted her feet as she remembered that night in the lake a few weeks ago. “Not really. Heard you did, though. Way to go.”

“Oh.. Haha, yeah… Hey, can I borrow a scarf?”

What was that supposed to mean? Natalie wondered as she exited their shared bunk, winding the thin black material around her neck. She was able to breathe a little easier, knowing they were covered now, but she still didn’t know who had left them.

*

“Hey, Lucifer!”

He had his nose stuck in a book, as per usual when he wasn’t wrecking havoc and corrupting the youth, as Michael would have put it. He didn’t acknowledge her, but that was also typical. She knew he was listening.

“Paradise Lost, huh? That’s funny. I didn’t know you could read anything intellectual,” she joked, a grin splitting her face. He looked up at her then, with an eyebrow raised, and her smile slipped a little. She quickly forced it back up, though it was less genuine than before.

“Say, um, I was just wondering, for no particular reason, it just seems like you’d have some experience but also guys who look at porn as often as you are usually compensating for something so maybe not—”

“What,” Lucifer said through his teeth, “do you want, kid?”

“Right, right. I was just wondering if you’d ever sucked someone off before.”

“...What?”

“You know,” she said, gesturing vaguely.

“No,” he replied, closing his book and sitting up. “I don’t think I do. Please, enlighten me.”

“You know. Like… oh, forget it. I thought I could count on you, Lucifer,” she pouted, being dramatic to try to make him forget the subject. Clearly, he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“That was your first mistake, kid.” He reopened his book, and she sighed, walking away.

*

“Hey, Kristi—”

Kristi turned her nose up and walked right past her, sniffing indignantly. Natalie supposed that had something to do with the whispers she’d heard that morning about what she’d done last night.

So, not Kristi, then. Not that she had much faith in that option anyways, but it was nice to have the confirmation.

“Thank God,” she whispered to herself, then had to stop to wonder if God would even want her thanks anymore.

*

“Michael, my man! What’s… going…” Natalie trailed off as she took in the state of the head youth pastor. He looked like he hadn’t slept a wink and in fact, was in a very sour mood.

“Not now, Gingersnap,” he said, snappy and short. She held her hands up in surrender.

“Sorry to bother you,” she conceded, and his eyes softened.

“Hey, look, I didn’t mean to sound so harsh. I’m just… not feeling great this morning. If you need something, try Raph or Gabe, ok?”

“Yeah, sure. No problem.”

Not Michael, then. Again, she whispered a quick thank you.

She really didn’t know what she would have done if it turned out that Michael was the source.

*

Natalie went through the remaining potential suspects in her head. Mike was too soft, she decided. He would never leave anything like that on her, let alone so many. Raphael was gay. Gabriel was in love with Anthea.

Ipos and Sheila were among some of the only faces she remembered clearly from the night before, but they were pretty dedicated to each other. She’d already asked Lucifer, so that left Zadkiel, but the thought of asking her unnerved her more than it should’ve.

And, if it had been Zadkiel, there was no way she would’ve let Natalie go all morning without reminding her of it.

There was her answer there, too. It couldn’t have been Zadkiel.

But by her deduction process, it couldn’t have been anyone. Who had hickey’d her?

*

Natalie flopped into the chair across from Lucifer, groaning and muttering to herself. He ignored her, keeping his eyes glued to his book. She huffed a little more, shifting in her seat. Several minutes passed before he acknowledged her.

“Did you want something?” With the prompt, she opened like a dam. There was hardly a beat between him finishing his sentence and her beginning hers.

“I did something last night… And I don’t remember who I did it with.”

“Sounds like you have a problem, but I don’t remember opening up confessions.”

“That’s Catholics, you jerk.”

“Then why are you telling me?”

“Because you’re a youth pastor and you should let me unload on you.”

“Is that so?” he asked, turning a page slowly and fighting a grin. “You did plenty of that last night.”

It took her a second to catch his meaning, but when she did, she gasped.

“It was you!”

He lifted his eyes to hers finally, raising an eyebrow.

“Why did you pretend you didn’t know what I was talking about this morning?!” she exclaimed, snatching his book from his hands and whacking his arm with it.

“Because it’s fun to watch you squirm.”

Another double entendre, and she blushed. Lucifer smirked, plucking his book back.

“I was drunk! You took advantage of me,” she accused, fighting the warmth on her face and in her belly.

“You didn’t seem to mind being taken advantage of. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

Natalie sputtered, placing her hands on her thighs and bracing herself as she leaned forward.

“Of course not! I was drunk. I don’t remember anything. What did you — did I — did we—”

“No,” he said, and his eyes were dark as he copied her position to meet her in the middle. “I stopped even though you were begging me not to, kid.”

“I—” Natalie’s flush deepened, “I don’t believe that.” He sat back, shrugging nonchalantly.

“Believe what you want. I’m the only one who was there who remembers what happened. You didn’t seem to think I had anything to compensate for last night, though.”

She choked, recalling her earlier words to him. He gave her that smug look she found half infuriating half extremely attractive, but she stayed silent. Her mind and her heart raced, trying to put together the pieces he’d given her and come up with a sufficient response.

“Why… I mean, what happened? What, um… started it?” she asked, half afraid of the answer but needing to know. She remembered joining him, Ipos, Sheila and Zadkiel in the woods. She remembered the bottle of wine, and there were fleeting glimpses of others’ faces.

But other than that the night was a blur.

“We were playing truth or dare after you got drunk on the blood of Christ.” He sounded amused, but Natalie moaned and buried her face in her hands. Oh, yeah, she was definitely sure God didn’t want anything from her now.

“And…?” she prompted, through her mortification.

“You’re something of an antichrist when you’re drunk. Did you know that? You’re a fearless little motherfucker.”

That was a compliment from him, and she blanched. Oh, gosh.

“What did I do?”

“Let’s see, let’s see…” He was enjoying keeping her on edge, and she was just about ready to strangle him. “You slingshot Michael’s dick with a rock you found. You jumped off Hangman’s Ridge into the lake. You made out with Zadkiel. You stole Dad’s Bible.”

“No,” Natalie gasped, but Lucifer was undeterred.

“You tied Gabe’s laces together and made him trip in front of Anthea. You tied Uriel to the flagpole.”

“How even— you know, I don’t wanna know how I did it. Is that… Is that it?”

Lucifer smirked. Natalie tensed.

“You flashed me, and we ended up in a bush hiding from Michael.”

“What… What did you dare me to do?” she asked, in a small voice. Some of what he’d said was actually pretty funny, but her head was still pounding and she couldn’t pull apart the good from the bad yet.

“You dared me to kiss you. And I don’t back out of dares, girl.”

There was some part of Natalie that was relieved that that was it. Another part of her, however, soured at his words.

“So it was part of a dare?” she asked, leaning back.

“Were you expecting something else?”

“No,” she said, too quickly. “Just… didn’t think all of this would just be the result of a silly dare, that’s all.”

“Silly, hmm?” He stood up, crossing the little bit of space between them until he was right in front of her. He slipped his finger beneath the thin scarf wrapped around her neck, and she went still as he unwound it.

“What are you doing?”

“Just taking a look at my handiwork,” he said, dropping his voice to match the breathy quality hers had taken on.

The hickeys started high on her neck and disappeared below the high collar of her T-shirt. He ran his thumb over one of the visible ones, and she shivered. He lowered his mouth to her ear.

“You know what I think?”

“...What?”

“I think… you were hoping for something more.”

“Wh… No, I wasn’t.” She wasn’t very convincing, and Lucifer was so close she felt him smirk against her ear.

“Are you sure? Drunk Natalie is fun, but all that’s gotta come from somewhere. I know Sober Natalie isn’t the devout little Christian girl I thought she was 8 weeks ago.”

“I…” She trailed off, hazy as his tongue traced the shell of her ear. She felt warm all over, and she couldn’t remember the taste of his lips but she wanted to.

“Natalie.”

“Hmm?”

There was a pause, deliberate and drawn out to make her squirm. He exhaled and her fingers curled into fists on her thighs.

“It’s time for service,” he finally said, and straightened up as a rush of kids passed by the window towards the small church housed at the edge of the camp. “You might want to pull yourself together first. You’re looking a little like you’ve been doing something you shouldn’t.”

He winked, and walked around her towards the door.

Natalie sat, shellshocked and unmoving for several beats.

“You jerk!” she finally yelled, once she’d gathered her wits about her. He was already out the door, but she heard him laugh nonetheless.